Past Imperfect
by Vitellia
Summary: Riddle is dead, but he took most of Hermione Granger's loved ones with him. She is just going through the motions in a bleak postwar world until a stray comment by Dumbledore's portrait gives her a renewed purpose in life – to go back and fix what the scheming Headmaster wrecked.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Hermione can't stand the fourth years. Not the Gryffindors and Slytherins she's glowering at now, and not the Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws she glowered at earlier in the day. They're the first class to start Hogwarts after the war, the first who weren't here during that last awful year when Snape was trying to keep children from being tortured. The year Hermione was hunting Horcruxes, cold, hungry, and sleeping in a tent. The year Harry killed Riddle and was killed in turn by the accidental horcrux in his own head. The year Ron and Fred were killed in the final battle, and George started drinking himself to death.

The year they found out that Dumbledore, that fucking tosser, was nearly as bad as Riddle when it came to ridiculous plots and machinations.

"Miss Prentice," she says. "A Death Eater is attacking you. Why are you giggling?" The Death Eater in question, who has a very obvious crush on Prentice, is casting a series of weak jinxes that barely cause a ripple in her equally weak shield.

"Ow!" Prentice cries when Hermione sends a stinging hex through her shield.

"Will shouting 'Ow!' at him stop the Death Eater from killing you, Miss Prentice?" The girl looks back at her in sullen silence. "Will it stop him from using the Cruciatus curse on you? Will it stop him from putting you under Imperius and forcing you to torture someone? Will it stop him from raping you?"

Prentice rolls her eyes. "There aren't any Death Eaters today, Professor Granger."

She knows the war isn't real to these kids. To a few of them, yes, ones with parents or older siblings who died or were tortured. But to most of them it's just something the grown-ups talk about, as relevant to them as the Goblin Wars that Binns used to drone on about were when Hermione was a fourth year.

"There would be a great many Death Eaters if we had faced them with shields like yours. Ten points from Gryffindor for a pathetic Protego, and ten more for cheek."

This class was all right when they started. First years are little enough to be cute, and intimidated enough to be well behaved. It goes downhill from there, familiarity with their professors breeding contempt and teenage hormones running amok, until they're full-blown monsters in fourth and fifth year. By sixth year they've started turning into young adults and become bearable again. When she first started teaching, even the hormone-addled fourth and fifth years took DADA seriously. They had, after all, been at the wrong end of the Carrows' wands.

A hand goes up. Hermione nods at the boy, who says, "Actually there are Death Eaters today. There's one right here at Hogwarts."

"Are you certain this is a discussion you wish to begin, Mr. Carter?" she asks. Her voice is deadly quiet, like Snape's used to be when he was about to pounce. It's astonishing how much she learned about how to teach from a teacher most of her classmates hated. Carter holds her gaze for a moment, then looks away. "As I thought," she says. "For those of you who might be unaware, it is Professor Malfoy to whom Mr. Carter refers. Tell me, Mr. Carter, how old was Professor Malfoy when he was Marked?"

"Eighteen? Maybe seventeen?"

"Sixteen. He was sixteen years old. How old are you, Mr. Carter?"

"Fifteen, Professor."

Murmuring an incantation, she waves her wand and a life size image of Riddle, with his red eyes and non-existent nose, appears before the class. A few of the students flinch, but some, including Prentice and Carter, make a show of looking bored.

"Riddle," she says. She always calls him Riddle, even in her head, refuses to use the ridiculous name he gave himself. "Tell me, Mr. Carter, if this… _thing_ were living in your house, threatening to kill your parents, would you tell it no when it demanded your allegiance to its sick little band of murderers?"

"Why did people follow something that looked like that?" another student asks. "Weren't they grossed out?"

"When he started building his following, Tom Riddle looked like this," she says, summoning an image of him young and handsome to stand beside his noseless alter ego.

"He was _hot_ ," a girl whispers to her friend.

"He was indeed, Miss Kasubowski," Hermione agrees. The class laughs. "But he wasn't only handsome. He was also charming. He was intelligent. And he was utterly without moral scruples of any kind. A Muggle psychologist would call him a sociopath."

"Not a psychopath?"

"Possibly, but the actual psychosis may have begun only when he started creating Horcruxes. In the beginning, he was just a clever, charming, handsome young man who was seduced by the Dark Arts." Hermione pauses. "Why do we teach Defence Against the Dark Arts?"

"So we can learn to protect ourselves from evil people who practice the Dark Arts."

"In part, Miss Kasubowski. Why else?" After an uncomfortable silence, a hand goes up in the back. "Mr. Entwistle?"

"To teach us how to resist being seduced by the Dark Arts and practicing them ourselves."

"Like we would!" Prentice huffs.

"Fifty points to Slytherin."

The class gasps. Professor Granger has never awarded that many points at once in all the four years she's been teaching them.

"You don't think you could ever be seduced by the Dark Arts, Miss Prentice?"

"Never."

"What about you, Miss Kasubowski? What if you'd gone to school with young Tom Riddle?" She smirks. "Young, _hot_ Tom Riddle."

The class laughs, and Kasubowski blushes.

"What if a charming, handsome, brilliant classmate was starting a political movement, and invited you to be a part of it? There's no talk of torture or killing or even world domination. Just sensible proposals for reforming the Ministry. Only the best and the brightest are invited." She sneers. "Only the cool kids."

The class shifts uncomfortably.

"When I was at Hogwarts, we had another former Death Eater on the staff. When I was in sixth year, he taught Defence. He told us that anyone – anyone – could succumb under the right circumstances. We scoffed, naturally. He asked who in the class – it was combined Gryffindor and Slytherin – was the least likely ever to be seduced by the Dark Arts. The class debated for a while, and finally settled on me." She smiles. "I was quite the goody-goody little swot back in the day."

Smirks and giggles from the class.

"Our professor told me to take a dueling stance. Then he took a wand oath and swore that nothing I said or did during our duel would be punished by loss of points or any other means."

"Why?"

"Because during that duel he pushed me so far that I tried to Crucio him."

Gasps from the class. "And you didn't get expelled?" Carter asks.

"You do know what a wand oath is?" She pauses. "Two feet on wand oaths and Unbreakable Vows by next class." Groans, and more than a few sullen glares are cast Carter's way.

"But professor," Kasubowski says, "how could he get you to do that? You've always been on the side of Light. You teach us how to _defeat_ the Dark."

"And the reason I can is because I understand it. You can't fight what you don't understand."

"Are you going to try to get us to Crucio you?" Entwistle asks.

"You think I want to get sacked?" Hermione laughs. "Though I'm sure some of you would be delighted if I did."

"Did Professor Snape get sacked?" Entwistle asks.

So they weren't entirely ignorant of history, Hermione thinks with satisfaction. At least not all of them. "No," she says. "but he disarmed me before I could actually cast the curse – and Headmistress McGonagall runs a tighter ship than Headmaster Dumbledore did." And thank all the gods in all the pantheons for that, she adds silently.

"Have a good weekend," she says. "Don't cause too much trouble in Hogsmeade tomorrow." On second thought, since Sybil is chaperoning, they can cause all the trouble they bloody well like.

Entwistle is the last to leave. "Professor? How did he get you to do it?"

"That's a story for another day," she says. It's been a long time since she's let herself think about the things Snape said and did that day and the disturbing feelings they aroused in her. He actually apologized after class, said he hadn't meant for that to happen – he didn't say what _that_ was, but they both knew – that he'd only been trying to make her angry enough to cast the curse. Snape apologizing was almost as much of a mind fuck as what had happened while they were dueling. Almost, but not quite.

Since the fourth years are her last class of the week, she locks up the classroom and heads out to the lake, as she does most Friday afternoons. That class was supposed to be just practicing shielding, and instead she'd got dragged into a conversation about good and evil, Riddle and Malfoy and Snape. Now, her head is full of the war and its aftermath.

All that year they were teaching themselves Defence because fucking Umbridge wouldn't, the year they were hunting Horcruxes, they just assumed that once Riddle was dead, everything would be okay. But nothing is okay. Harry and Ron are dead. Molly can't even look at Hermione because Ron threw himself in front of an Avada for her. If it wasn't for her, Ron would be alive. Molly doesn't actually blame her – Molly said so often enough, in a _the lady doth protest too much_ kind of way – but it's there, poisoning everything.

It's ironic that now, after all those years without money and status, the Weasleys have both now but they're miserable. Arthur is Minister, and Ginny acts as Arthur's hostess at Ministry events because Molly won't leave the house. She doesn't even cook anymore. They have a house elf, and Molly sits and stares at the clock that shows Fred and Ron Beyond the Veil. And watches George drink. The once vivacious, flirtatious Ginny wears subdued black dresses like Queen Victoria in perpetual mourning for Prince Albert. Without her Prince Harry, she goes decorously through the motions, the soul of a 40-year-old widow in the body of a 21-year-old girl.

Hermione thinks of all of her friends now gone. Ron and Harry and Luna dead. Fred and Remus and Tonks dead. Ginny like the walking dead. Neville is alive and well but since that Parkinson bitch married him in hopes of restoring her shredded reputation, Hermione never sees him.

And her parents. God, her parents. She went to Australia to try to reverse the memory charm, but she couldn't. They thought she was a lunatic and tried to call the police. In the end, she'd had to Obliviate the memory of her visit and accept that they too were lost to her.

It is the irony of ironies that the only person she has now is Malfoy. Oh, Minerva and Filius and the rest of the staff are kind to her, but she's not close to any of them. Only Malfoy. Malfoy the ex-Death Eater. Malfoy who spent six years calling her Mudblood. Malfoy who risked his own life and his parents' lives by refusing to identify her and Harry and Ron when they were captured.

Malfoy, who's as lonely and fucked up as she is.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Malfoy is waiting for her at the lake.

"Any more exploding cauldrons?" she asks.

"Dunderheads," he says. They both smile. "Did you read the _Prophet_ today?"

"That rag."

"The Wizengamot are considering a marriage law."

"Bastards," she says, but there's no heat behind it. She expects nothing else. "They've been talking about it for months. Nothing will come of it."

"Probably," he says.

"But if they do…"

"Then we'll get married," Malfoy says.

She laughs bitterly. "The pureblood prince brought low, forced to couple with a Mudblood."

"Don't. Fuck, Granger, don't. Not ever. You know I…"

"I know. I'm sorry. You didn't deserve that."

"Actually, I probably did."

"Four years ago you did. But not anymore. I forgave you years ago. You know that, right?"

"I know."

"And I do love you. I'm just not _in_ love with you, any more than you're in love with me."

He looks out at the lake.

"And honestly, Malfoy, a girl doesn't want her husband to be prettier than she is."

"Granger…"

"I just… I don't want to be bred like cattle, you know?"

"I know," he says, taking her hand and pulling her to sit next to him, leaning against a tree. They're quiet for a while, both looking out at the lake.

"I shouldn't ask," he says after a while.

"They want you to come tomorrow?"

"Yeah."

"I'll go."

"You don't have to."

"I know I don't." She also knows he can't bear it on his own. "It's okay, Malfoy. Every time I go it's a little easier." Every time the panic recedes a little more, and the psychosomatic pain in her arm is a little less. "And the tea and cakes are good."

"Because, elves."

She flips him the bird. "And I get to use the library. I brought so many books back with me last time they almost broke the undetectable extension charm on my bag. I need to return them."

"Father's not going to call the Aurors if you keep them another week." He sighs. "Then again, I doubt the Aurors would come even if he did call them."

Because, Death Eater, neither of them say.

The next day, Malfoy side-alongs her into the apparition foyer at the Manor. They actually have an entire room whose only purpose is for people to apparate into. Talk about conspicuous consumption.

An elf takes their coats and gloves as Narcissa comes to greet them. "Hello, darling," she says, kissing Draco's cheek. "Professor Granger, I'm so glad you could come."

"Thank you, Mrs. Malfoy," Hermione says, feeling wrong-footed as usual. As smart as her outfit always looks in front of the mirror in her bedroom, it never looks as good once she gets here, amid all the beauty and elegance and blondness.

"Is that Severus?" Lucius asks as he follows Narcissa into the foyer. He used to rape and torture and run a business empire. Now he follows Narcissa around an empty house like a big, blond, slightly confused puppy.

"No, love, it's Draco and Professor Granger," Narcissa says.

"Hello, Professor Granger," he says, giving Hermione what looks like a genuine smile, as though she were a pureblood lady who deserves his courtesy. As though she'd never spilled her muddy blood on his drawing room carpet.

This is one of the good days. On good days, Lucius calls her Professor Granger or occasionally even my dear. Other days he thinks she's Bellatrix. On the bad days he refers to her as Draco's Mudblood, saying it isn't bad to keep such a thing on the side, but bringing her home, well, in his day it just wasn't done. Narcissa looks apologetic when he does this. It's what keeps them from progressing from Mrs. Malfoy and Professor Granger to Narcissa and Hermione.

"Severus hasn't visited for a long time," Lucius complains.

"I know, love."

"Perhaps he'll come tomorrow?"

"Perhaps." Narcissa has long since given up telling him that Severus won't come tomorrow or any other day. She takes his arm and leads him into the sitting room, where there are cakes, the chocolate ones that Hermione loves, and the lemon ones that have been Draco's favorite since he was a little boy.

They drink their tea and Narcissa leads them in gracious small talk as if she and Lucius haven't been under house arrest so long that his wits are addled by the solitude. Well, the solitude on top of too many bouts of Cruciatus.

Hermione doesn't hate either of them anymore. Narcissa is too gracious and Lucius is too sad. Still, the thought of them as her in-laws… If they do pass the law, she'd rather marry Malfoy than anyone else, but having her father-in-law call her Mudblood on his bad days would get tiresome.

After the cakes, Hermione heads to the library to look for more books on memory charms. She's read every last one in the Hogwarts library, and in the collection that Snape left in his will to Malfoy. It will take a while to work her way through the collection here at the Manor, but what else does she have to do?


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Minerva looks up with a tired smile when Hermione enters for their regular Wednesday check-in. A conscientious Headmistress, Minerva meets with each of her teachers every week if she can.

Hermione pours the tea, fixes Minerva's the way she likes it and hands it to her. Minerva picks it up left handed and sips, her withered right hand lying in her lap. She's gotten fairly good with a wand in her left hand since the final battle, but her Heads of House have to keep up the castle wards for her.

"Draco says neither of you will flee the country if they pass the law."

"We'll stay."

"I'm glad I won't have to replace the two of you."

"They might not pass it."

"I think your young man is hoping they do."

"He's not 'my young man,' Minerva."

"All right, I'll mind my own business."

"Thank you," Hermione says, then, "I told the fourth years about the time I almost cast the Cruciatus." She glances at Snape's portrait. He's watching, listening, as he usually is when she's in here. He never speaks though. Minerva says he hasn't, not once, since his portrait animated. He won't even talk to Malfoy, his own godson. Hermione is pretty annoyed with him about that.

"I thought," Minerva begins, but then Pomona's Patronus appears, asking the Headmistress to come quickly. "Wait for me here, if you can, Hermione," Minerva says, leaving her alone in the office. Well, as alone as you can be with a lot of sentient oil on canvas watching you.

"Do you think it was wise to tell students as young as fourth year about that?" Albus asks from his frame.

"Bugger off," Hermione tells him. Snape's portrait smirks.

"Now, now, my dear," Albus soothes.

"Don't 'my dear' me, you manipulative old bastard. I know Minerva likes you, but I think you're the greatest git of all time."

Snape barks out a laugh. "I thought I had that title."

"You don't even make the top ten," she says, trying not to look shocked that he is actually talking to her.

"No?"

"No. Actually, I suppose Riddle tops the list. Albus is number two."

Snape throws back his painted head and laughs. Hermione tries not to stare. In life, she saw him smirk often, and almost smile once or twice, but never laugh.

"Who are the rest of the list?"

"Well, Malfoy _pere et fils_ started out as three and four, and the order was a close thing, but they've dropped off now, Lucius because he's a broken man who's suffered enough, and Draco…"

"And Draco?"

"Why won't you talk to him?"

He scowls.

"He doesn't have a lot of people who care about him, and his godfather's rejection hurts."

"And this concerns you because…?"

"You'll find this hard to believe, Headmaster, but Malfoy is my best friend now. Actually my only friend, so best by default. Most of my friends are dead. Ginny stumbles through life like a zombie, George is drunk most of the time, and Parkinson won't let Neville off his leash long enough to see me."

"Don't call me that," he says.

"What?"

"Headmaster," he says. "I never deserved the title, not when the Dark Lord is the one who gave it to me."

"You earned it when you spent a year protecting students while everyone hated you."

"Hear, hear," Albus says.

"Did anyone invite you to join this conversation?" Hermione says. "You can fuck right off, Number Two."

Snape laughs again, a real, laugh, a belly laugh, deep and rich. His dark eyes crinkle and Hermione finds her own filling with tears.

Snape stops laughing. "What's wrong?" he asks.

"I wish I could have seen you laugh when you were alive. I wish I'd known you better." She shakes her head. "If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride, as my grandmother used to say."

"Indeed," Snape says.

"As long as I'm being ridiculous, I wish there was a Time Turner that would let me go back and fix all this, so that Harry and Ron weren't dead, and Malfoy wasn't branded by a psychopath at sixteen, and my parents weren't Obliviated, and Minerva had her wand arm back, and you weren't dead, Professor."

"Actually," Albus begins.

"I distinctly heard Professor Granger tell you to fuck off," Snape says.

"But there is such a Time Turner," Albus says.

"Then why didn't you tell anyone? Why didn't you _fix_ things?" Hermione practically sobs.

"Be glad he didn't," Snape sneers. "Can you imagine how badly he'd have bollocksed it up if he had?"

"Right," Hermione agrees. "He sent a child – a _child_ – to hunt Horcruxes, instead of telling you about them."

"Until it was too late," Snape says. "That ridiculous fiasco with the fake locket in the cave was entirely avoidable. I created that potion, and I never gave that madman anything for which I hadn't already created an antidote."

"Hmpf," Albus grumbles.

"But that isn't the worst of it." After four years of silence, Snape is on a tear. "The absolute fucking worst is that there's a potion that can remove a Horcrux from a living being."

Hermione feels lightheaded. "You mean Harry didn't have to die?"

"No."

"You mean this sodding bastard killed my best friend because he had to play cloak and dagger –"

"Because he's a drama queen, yes."

"I hardly think," Albus began.

On a bit of a tear herself, Hermione steamrolls right over him. "…instead of telling _his own spy_ , whom he supposedly _trusted_ , who knew more about Dark Magic than probably anyone alive?"

"Ten points to Gryffindor."

Minerva opens the door and walks to her desk. "I'm sorry to have kept you waiting so long, Hermione."

Snape's features settle into their usual neutral expression. Albus looks like he wants to say something but thinks better of it. Minerva is clearly worn out by whatever fire she had to put out.

"Shall we have our chat another time, Minerva?" Hermione suggests.

"Yes, dear. If you don't mind."

Hermione glares at Dumbledore's portrait. It's his fault Minerva looks old and exhausted and frail. She isn't old enough to look this way. She _shouldn't_ look this way. But the war chewed her up and spit her out just as it did the rest of them, the living and the dead.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Hermione walks straight from Minerva's office to the gates and apparates to Grimmauld Place. She's cutting it close, but she should still get to her seventh year class in time, provided there are no histrionics from Kreacher.

"What brings Mistress home in the middle of the school day?" asks the elf in question, who pops into the library the moment she arrives.

"Just stopped in to pick something up," she says. Can she not have a moment's privacy in her own home? Why do people want to have servants when you have to answer to them? It's like living with your parents forever. "Nothing I need. You can go back to whatever you were doing, Kreacher."

"Kreacher lives to serve, Mistress." He bows low and disappears with a pop. He knows all about S.P.E.W. and says things like that just to yank her chain, she knows. She really should give him clothes, but Malfoy assures her it would be cruel, so she hasn't. Yet.

She walks over to the empty frame where Phineas Nigellus Black normally is. "Headmaster?" she calls, leaning toward the canvas.

"You don't need to shout, Professor Granger," he scolds, moving back into the frame. "I'm dead, not deaf."

"Sorry, Headmaster. If you don't mind, I'd like to bring your portrait back to Hogwarts with me."

"Why would I want both my portraits in the same place? The life of a portrait is tedious enough when I have free run of only two places, and you want to deny me even that?"

"It won't be for too long, Headmaster. I just need your portrait in my chambers at Hogwarts for a while so I can talk to Professor Snape."

"That's Headmaster Snape to you, missy."

"He doesn't like being called Headmaster."

"How would you know?"

"He told me."

"Nonsense. He hasn't spoken to anyone since he died. Even me," he adds, affronted.

"He talked to me today. And to Albus. Well, he yelled and swore at Albus. But he talked to me very nicely. Nicely for Snape, anyway."

"I'll believe that when I see it."

"Yes, you will, as soon as I get you back to Hogwarts," she says, and lifts the painting from the wall. Shrinking it and putting it in her bag, she apparates back to the school gates.

She's slightly out of breath when she gets to her classroom, just a few minutes before class is to begin. Phineas is going to complain about being left shrunken in her bag for the rest of the afternoon, but it can't be helped. This class is preparing for NEWTs and most of them can't cast a Patronus to save their lives.

She barely makes it to dinner because she spends a good half hour stroking Phineas Black's antiquated male ego in hopes that he'll calm down enough to agree to go see Snape and ask him to come to her chambers at eight o'clock.

"You only brought me here to get Snape for you," Phineas huffs when she returns to her rooms and hangs his portrait on her sitting room wall.

"Well, yes. I told you that myself at Grimmauld this afternoon. And excuse me for wanting to save the wizarding world," she snaps crossly.

"Gryffindors and their savior complexes."

"Headmaster, please…"

She has trouble concentrating while she helps the NEWT students with their Patronuses for an hour after dinner, but when she gets back to her chambers shortly before eight, there are two dead Headmasters waiting for her.

"Good evening, gentlemen," she says.

"Good evening, Professor Granger," Snape replies cordially.

Hermione resists the urge to tell Phineas _told you so_. "Thank you for coming, Professor Snape."

He nods, waiting.

"I have some questions about our conversation this afternoon."

"Naturally."

"The potion to remove a Horcrux. Could you teach Malfoy and me to brew it?"

"Is there another Dark Lord people have forgotten to tell the portraits about?"

"No, but there will be someday. Man's inhumanity to man is a renewable resource."

"Constant vigilance?"

"I am the DADA professor. It's in the job description. So, about the potion?"

"I can tell you in which book to find the instructions, and help you brew the base, but not produce the full potion."

"Why not?"

"There's an ingredient that's rather difficult to obtain."

Phineas yawns. "I hated Potions when I was at school. I'm off to have some fun being in two places at the same time."

"But remember, Albus can't know you're here, and especially not that you're in my chambers."

"Yes, yes. I may be over 150 years old, but I'm not senile, you know," he huffs as he disappears from the portrait frame.

"You still brew?"

"I help Malfoy with the potions for the infirmary."

"I used to do it on my own."

"He could easily enough, but it keeps my skills sharp, and keeps him company."

"You speak of him as though he were a friend, but you call him Malfoy."

"And he calls me Granger. It's what we always called each other in school, and by the time we got to be friends, it was what we were used to. After all these years it would be strange calling each other by first names. There's a point at which these things get set in stone, don't you think, Professor?"

"I do. Which means you should probably start calling me Severus now."

"If you'll call me Hermione," she says, keeping her tone neutral as her inner voice shrieks, _Snape wants me to call him Severus?_ Either the painter couldn't imbue the canvas with all the vitriol of the living Snape or he's mellowed after four years of silent brooding.

"Severus, why wouldn't you talk to Malfoy when he went to see you?"

"I wouldn't talk to anyone, Hermione."

"So why did you talk to me?"

"At first, because you surprised me and made me laugh. I hadn't laughed since, well, I can't remember. Before I killed Albus anyway."

"Would you talk to Malfoy now?"

He doesn't answer.

"It would mean a lot to him. He doesn't have a lot of people in his life who care about him."

"He has you."

"You're his godfather."

Severus sighs.

Hermione picks up her wand and casts her Patronus. She looks at Severus, waiting for him to tell her no, but he doesn't. "Malfoy, can you come to my chambers?" she says, and the otter disappears to deliver its message.

"Uncle Severus!" Draco gasps when he arrives.

"A reasonable facsimile, at least," his godfather's portrait says.

"Granger, how…?"

"I made him laugh."

At that, Draco laughs, too, and lifts Hermione off her feet, swinging her around.

"Put me down and talk to your godfather, Malfoy."

"Still bossy, I see," Severus observes.

"You have no idea," Draco says.

"If the two of you are going to gang up and pick on me…" It's like Harry and Ron all over again, she thinks, which makes her sad, and her smile fades. She walks to the door that leads to her office. "I'm going to do some marking, give you two a little privacy to catch up."

When she comes back, head spinning from what her third years don't know about Boggarts, Draco is asking Severus, "Could I bring you to see Father sometime?"

"Headmasters' portraits can't be moved from Hogwarts."

"But if you were in this portrait, not yours, like now, and we moved it?"

"I don't think it works like that, Draco. But Lucius could come here to see me."

"He's under house arrest. He and Mother both."

"For how long?"

"Indefinitely. They have a hearing every year, and every year the cattle breeders decide they're still too dangerous."

"Cattle breeders?"

"That's what Granger calls the Wizengamot. Because of the marriage law."

"Ah, yes. I've heard Minerva talking about it."

"Severus?" Hermione says. "What did Dumbledore mean about the Time Turner?"

"Wait. You call him Severus when you still call me Malfoy?" Draco interrupts before Snape can answer.

"I pointed out the oddness of that to her before you arrived."

"You call me Granger."

"Hermione," Draco says, trying it out. "Hermione." He sighs. "No, it's just too weird."

"As I said," Hermione says. "So about the Time Turner."

"Time Turner?" Draco asks.

"When we were in Minerva's office, Dumbledore said there was a Time Turner that could fix things," she explains. "I remember hearing rumors about the Department of Mysteries developing one that would allow someone to go back years rather than days, but I always thought it was just an urban legend. And even if it wasn't, I thought they were all destroyed back in our fifth year."

"Budge over, Snape." Phineas shoves his way into the center of the frame. "Didn't anyone ever tell you guests shouldn't overstay their welcome?"

"Fat Lady turn you down?" Severus drawls.

"Don't be crass, young man." Phineas notices Draco. "You have the look of a Malfoy."

"Draco," Severus tells him, "Narcissa's son."

"Ah, so that would make you my great-great-great-grandson. Pleased to meet you, my boy. How is your mother? Lovely woman, Narcissa."

"She's been better," Draco says. "House arrest. But she's alive and sane, which is more than a lot of people these days."

"So. About. The. Time. Turner?" Hermione says, as if talking to the mentally challenged.

"No manners at all," Phineas sniffs.

"You get used to it," Severus sighs. "The Department of Mysteries _was_ working on one that allowed you to go back years."

"How many years?"

"Nine was the most they'd attempted successfully. Further back and there were accidents."

"We'd only need seven. Our fourth year, when Riddle came back."

Draco stares at her. "Granger, are you seriously –"

"Even though they could go back nine years," Severus continues, "they couldn't _stay_ back for more than a few hours without serious health problems. That's how I came to know about the experiments. The Unspeakables asked me to develop a potion to counteract the effects of the temporal shift."

"And did you?"

"I was working on it, had developed one that could keep a person alive and healthy for a few months in the past. I probably could have extended it, but after you lot had your little shoot-out in the Department of Mysteries and damaged all the Time Turners, there didn't seem much point in continuing."

"I'd only need a few months anyway."

" _You'd_ need?" Draco says.

"Do try to keep up, Malfoy."

"Maybe _you_ should keep up, Granger. The Time Turners were destroyed, remember?"

"Albus said they weren't, not all of them anyway."

"You can't trust Albus as far as you can throw him," Severus says.

"And you can't throw a portrait at all, really," Phineas points out. "Though I suppose you or I could, Snape."

"You could also ask him about the Time Turner," Hermione says.

"He wouldn't tell me. Not without a lot of cloak and dagger nonsense, anyway."

Hermione shrugs. "So we let him play cloak and dagger."

"No, thank you."

"Were you or were you not a spy?"

"I'm sick and tired of being a spy."

"Don't whinge, Severus."

"Is she always like this?" Severus asks Draco.

"Pretty much."

"So we let Albus in on a bit of the plotting," she continues, ignoring them. "Not all of it, mind. Just enough to whet his appetite. But not here. I don't want him to know there's a portrait in my rooms. Phineas, can you ask him to meet with us in some other portrait someplace else, tell him that's where we've been meeting?"

"I live to be your messenger boy, Professor Granger."

"Are we really not using first names yet?"

"I do not recall giving you permission."

She sighs. "Fine. My apologies. Headmaster Black, would you be so kind as to find somewhere we can pretend to plot with Albus?"

"As my lady wishes," he says, and moves out of the frame.

"Are _all_ the former Headmasters drama queens?" Hermione asks, and when Severus lifts a painted brow, adds, "Present company excepted, of course."


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

"So, the cup, the diadem, the ring, the locket. The diary will already have been destroyed, and he doesn't make the snake a Horcrux till after he comes back," Hermione says, quill flying across parchment. She doesn't need the list, but making them soothes her.

"And Potter," Severus says.

"And Harry." She writes his name on her list then looks up at the portrait. "You said there was an ingredient for the potion to remove the Horcrux that would be difficult to obtain."

"Yes."

"What ingredient?"

"Virgin's blood."

"But that's not difficult –" She stops, realizes. "Oh. We're not talking about the kind where the lady pricks her finger over the cauldron, then?"

"No."

"Right," she says, shuffling her papers. "Well, of the other Horcruxes, the only one that will be difficult to get is the cup."

"You've known how to brew Polyjuice for over a decade, I believe."

"Bellatrix will be in Azkaban. She couldn't just show up at Gringotts, even if we could get one of her hairs."

"Now I see why you weren't sorted into Ravenclaw."

She ignores him and waits. She's learned that it's pointless to try to hurry him. He'll tell her what she wants to know eventually if she patiently sits through his snarkiness.

"Her sister has access to her vault, and I have access to Lucius and Narcissa's hair."

"Why Lucius?"

"Because you need someone who knows Narcissa to go with you and keep you from making stupid mistakes."

"I changed my mind. You _are_ on the top ten list."

"Where do I rank?"

"Oh, maybe around six?"

"We need to talk about it, you know."

"It's my list. You don't get a say."

"Not about your list. About the only Horcrux we can't destroy with Fiendfyre or a basilisk fang."

"Don't forget the Sword of Gryffindor."

"Perish the thought," he says. "Now about the potion for Potter."

"I'll bring the book back with me and we'll brew it."

"We?"

"Your past self and I."

"And the difficult to obtain ingredient?"

"We'll get it sorted."

"I hope you don't expect my younger self to ravish some sixth year and then Obliviate her? I was a Death Eater, but there are limits to my depravity."

"Says the man who tried to make me Crucio him by getting me turned on." She claps her hand over her mouth, horrified. "Shit."

"You needn't be embarrassed. There's a connection between Dark magic and sexuality. It's one of the things that makes the Dark Arts so hard to resist, and that makes everyone susceptible."

"I've read something about that." But reading and experiencing were two different things. The unexpected jolt of arousal had come after his hexes had turned darker – not fully Dark, but definitely gray – and she had responded in kind. Arousal fueled her anger, which in turn fueled her lust, the two so tangled up she couldn't tell where one ended and the other began, the blood roaring in her ears as they dueled. It had been intoxicating. She had never felt so alive, before or since. She finally understood why some witches and wizards succumbed to the Darkness.

"It doesn't always happen," Severus says. "I didn't think it would with you. I was only trying to make you angry, as I told you that day. I never imagined…"

"I couldn't believe you actually apologized. I didn't think you ever apologized for anything."

"I rarely apologize, it's true. But that…well, that was beyond the pale."

"Because even your depravity has limits," she smiles. Then, thoughtfully, she continues, "Before that I never thought arousal might be something to fear. In my mind, sex was all that nonsense that Lavender and Parvati would blather on about when I was trying to sleep. It was the clumsy, fumbling boys I'd catch pawing girls in alcoves when I was on patrol. I had no idea it was anything…like that."

"Which is why the Dark Arts calls out to it."

"What did it feel like, getting Marked? Malfoy won't talk about it."

"It hurt. Quite a lot. But there was pleasure along with the pain." He hesitates. "More pleasure than in the most intense orgasm. The kind of pleasure you spend the rest of your life chasing."

She absorbs this quietly for a few minutes. "I don't think I'll share that with the fourth years."

"No, that's NEWT level."

She smiles.

"Are you really going to let number six on your list harvest that ingredient?"

Her eyes fly to his painted ones.

"How did I know?"

"Yes."

"Because you'd be stewing and fretting and making lists otherwise. You wouldn't have told me cool as you please that we'd sort it."

She hopes she isn't blushing as much as it feels like she is.

"I'm sorry that you have to...do that."

"It's fine."

"I doubt it'll be fine with my godson. He's in love with you, you know."

"He feels about me the same way I feel about him."

"I've known him since he was in nappies, Hermione. I also know what unrequited love looks like." He makes a face. "Altogether too well."

"I won't hurt him."

"You won't be able to help it."

"If the law passes I'll marry him."

"You'll marry him because of the law. And he'll always know it."

"But there isn't going to be any law because there isn't going to be any war."

"Because you're going to go back in time and offer yourself as a virgin sacrifice to the dreaded bat of the dungeons?"

She laughs.

"We could always do it after we get back from Gringotts, while we're still Polyjuiced as Lucius and Narcissa," he says.

"You're a kinky bastard, aren't you? Or did you have a secret crush on your best friend's wife?"

"I was considering your pleasure," he says stiffly. "At least Lucius is handsome. Something I've never been accused of being."

"Like I'd let Lucius Malfoy anywhere near me," she snorts. "And what does it matter that he's handsome? Gilderoy Lockhart is handsome. Cormac McLaggen is handsome — and number five on the top ten list. I can do without handsome."

"Why does McLaggen make the list?"

"He was my date to a Slug Club party in sixth year and wouldn't stop trying to stick his slimy tongue down my throat. The memory still triggers my gag reflex." Then suddenly it hits her – not once but twice he's apologized for the situation or tried to give her an out. She always assumed he was as confident as he appeared, but… "Oh, Severus."

"What?"

"You're insecure."

"I am not insecure."

"You are. The fearsome Severus Snape is _nervous_ about _girls_."

"Miss Granger…"

"Oh, it's Miss Granger again?" She grins wickedly. "You want to do teaching robes and school uniform after we're through playing Lord and Lady Malfoy?"

"Hermione," he warns in his best Professor Snape voice, but it's obviously lost its effect because she's still smiling.

"What are you going to do…give me _detention_?"

The absurdity of the situation finally overcomes his embarrassment and he smirks. "Just promise you won't torture my younger self like this. I don't think I could take it."

"Will your younger self, um…know what you're doing?"

"I was thirty-five years old in your fourth year. Of course I knew what I was doing." He pauses for a moment. "But you should go back in November, not at the beginning of the year."

"Why November?"

"I learned a new trick in October of that year." His voice practically drips with wicked promise. "Or, rather, I perfected one that I knew about in theory but hadn't quite mastered in practice."

Hermione blushes.

"Sauce for the goose."

"This part of the plan stays between us, right? If Albus ever finds out we're plotting my deflowering..."

"The horrid old coot won't stop cackling." His smile fades. "I just realized. This brilliant plan of yours has one glaring downside."

"What's that?"

"If I don't Avada him on the Astronomy Tower, we'll have Albus twinkling at us in your brave new world for who knows how many more years."

"Ugh."

"I know a potion you could slip him."

"I'm not doing this to become the next Dark Lady myself, you know."

"But what a Dark Lady you'd make. You're positively terrifying."

"Number four and climbing."

"But on the upside, if your plan succeeds you'll have Potter and Weasley to boss around, so you might leave me in peace."

"Or I might not."

After a moment he says, barely audibly, "I hope not."


	6. Chapter 6

**Author's Note** : Thank you to all who have read, reviewed (including those with PM function turned off so I couldn't respond to thank you), followed, and added this story to your list of favorites. I'm really enjoying writing it. The entire story is plotted out at 23 chapters and large chunks, including much of the ending, are written, so it won't be abandoned. I'm updating older chapters to correct typos when I find them, so feel free to PM me if you catch anything.

 **Disclaimer** : All characters belong to J. K. Rowling. I am merely amusing myself (and hopefully others) by playing with them.

* * *

Chapter 6

"I brought you some books," Hermione says as she and Draco enter her quarters. She's carrying not books but a framed canvas.

"In case you haven't noticed, I'm a portrait."

"And in case you haven't noticed, Severus, I'm a witch." She hangs the painting on the wall. There are no figures in it, just an empty library. "Filius taught me how to charm books into a painting so that all the text can be read."

Snape disappears from Phineas's portrait and reappears in the library.

"The ones on the table are the charmed ones," she says. "The ones on the shelves are just regular painted books."

He looks at the titles. "Ah. A research project, not for my reading pleasure."

"Same thing, I thought."

"For you, swot," Draco says, then notices Phineas's empty frame. "Doesn't he like us anymore?"

"He's probably off somewhere with his other portrait playing Fred and George Weasley," Hermione says.

"Or getting blown by the Fat Lady," Draco says.

"Ew." She glances at Severus, apparently absorbed in one of the charmed books, and casts a silent, wandless Muffliato. "Portraits can have sex?"

"Apparently. But only with other portraits."

"And you know this because…"

"Blokes talk. Even painted blokes are still blokes." Draco makes a face. "Though I wish he wouldn't, since he's my great-great-great-grandfather and all."

"Apparently the brightest witch of her age doesn't know that Muffliato doesn't work on portraits," Severus says without looking up from the book he's paging through.

"Less talking, more researching."

"I have more than enough time for research. I don't have a job and I don't need to sleep."

"Then by all means, go chat up the Fat Lady," she says. "I hear she likes dead Headmasters."

" _Head_ masters," Draco says.

"Men are disgusting," Hermione says. "Why are all my girlfriends dead or crazy?"

"Both your girlfriends," Draco corrects. "You didn't have many."

"I hate you."

"You love me."

"Yes, but I hate you."

"Can we pause the rom-com so I can read, please?" Severus drawls.

"I thought you were going to read while the humans sleep."

"No, I'm going to visit a portrait on the fifth floor while you sleep."

"The brunette in the blue dress? The one with the little dog?" Draco asks.

"Got it in one."

"If I were dead, I would absolutely hit that," Draco says solemnly.

"In retrospect, refusing to... _interact_ with anyone human or painted for four years was rather self-defeating."

"I hate you both," Hermione says.

"Let's go for a walk, Granger. Let Severus read," Draco smirks. "Or whatever."

As they walk toward the lake by unspoken agreement, Draco says, "After you go back, what if things are worse instead of better?"

"How could they be worse?"

"I could be that awful racist arsehole I used to be."

"You won't."

"But what if I am? It was losing everything that turned me into a decent human being. Or at least a halfway decent one."

Hermione thinks about this.

"I realize how selfish I'm being," he says. "Let Riddle destroy the world and kill everybody so I can be redeemed and you like me? I don't want everyone else to suffer, but I don't want to be the person that I was."

"I don't want you to be, either."

"You have to make sure I'm not."

"How?"

"I don't know, but you'll figure it out. You're the smartest person I know, Granger. Well, you and Severus. Between the two of you, you can figure out how to help me."

"We will. I promise."

He starts walking along the edge of the lake and she falls into step beside him. After a moment he says, "So. You and Severus."

"What?"

"The potion to remove the Horcrux from Potter. You two always change the subject when I bring it up, but I read about it in that book you keep trying to hide from me. I _am_ a Potions Master, you know."

"It can't be helped, Malfoy."

"But you like him. And he likes you."

"I like his portrait, and his portrait likes me. The real Severus and I will probably want to kill each other once I get back there."

"I just…."

"I know."

"Do you?" he asks, throwing rocks in the lake with more force than necessary. "Do you know that I wanted to be your first?"

"How did you know I didn't already have a first?"

"Everyone you might have shagged is dead except me. I kind of thought I'd win by default eventually." He sighs. "And now I'm losing to a dead man."

She doesn't know what to say, so she makes a joke, since that's what she and Malfoy do. They tease and snark and halfway flirt but they don't do serious. "What's more important, saving the entire wizarding world or being the first to shag me?"

"Well, when you put it like that," he says, playing along since their usual pattern is as comfortable for him as it is for her, "maybe a shag when you get back then?"

"Prat."

"So that would be a no?"

"When I get back everything's going to be different, Malfoy. Your family will still be rich and powerful and you'll probably be married to some inbred socialite your parents betrothed you to when you were two."

He makes a face. "Maybe a shag anyway?"

"Your muddy little something on the side?"

"Damn it, Granger."

"I'm just teasing."

"It's not funny." He takes her hand, strokes the entirely unfunny word carved into her arm.

"It will be, after I fix things. No Riddle, no war, no batshit Bellatrix."

"What if you hate me, the way you did in school?"

"Then you'll hate me, too, and it won't matter."

"I want it to matter. I want…I want to still be in love with you."

"Malfoy – "

"Draco," he says. "Please, Hermione. Draco."

"Draco," she says, and tries not to cry.

"I know you love me, but you're not _in_ love with me."

"Maybe I will be, after I fix things."

"I can hope, anyway," he says, then asks, "Can I kiss you? Not to start anything, but just so I'll know what it was like this once, before you go?"

She nods, and his lips brush hers. She lets them part a little, and he slides his arms around her waist and deepens the kiss. He's good at it, and she relaxes into his arms and sighs into his mouth. It's nice. It's supposed to be more than _nice_ , a little voice inside her whispers, but she tells it to shut up and lets her fingers slide through the silky hair at the back of Malfoy's – Draco's – neck.

They walk back to the castle in silence, holding hands. When they reach the door he lets her hand go. "See you, Granger."

"See you, Malfoy."

When she gets back to her rooms, Severus is in the library painting and Phineas is in his portrait.

"Why are you crying?" Phineas asks.

"Allergies," she says.

"Black, could you give us some privacy?" Severus asks.

"Need I remind you that this is _my_ portrait, Snape?"

"Please, Headmaster?" Hermione asks.

"For you, dear lady," he says, and moves out of the frame.

"And to think, he used to call me Mudblood."

Severus flinches.

"It's just a word, Severus. It has no power beyond what you give it."

"That word changed the course of my life."

"A whole chain of events, in which you calling Lily Evans that word was only one part, changed the course of your life. Her unwillingness to forgive you was also part of that chain."

"Have I no privacy at all?"

"Not since Rita Skeeter's book, no, not really."

He sighs. "So you would have forgiven Weasley if he'd called you that?"

"Are you kidding me? I forgave Ron _so_ much worse than that, _so_ many times."

He looks skeptical.

"Severus, think. Who's my closest friend? Malfoy spent _six years_ calling me Mudblood. It's just a stupid word."

"Sticks and stones?"

"Exactly. Of course, when Bellatrix carved it into my arm…"

"When she _what_?" he growls in the voice in which he used to use to demand just what it was Neville thought he was putting in his cauldron.

She pushes up her sleeve and shows him. His look is murderous. "Even this," she says. "It's not the word that makes it awful, but the fact that she cut me with a cursed knife. It hurt like nobody's business."

"Did she Crucio you, too?"

"Yes."

"Hermione…"

"I know. But it's in the past now. And I'll bet you suffered worse in all your years kow-towing to that psychotic nut job."

He nods. After a moment, he asks, "Why were you crying?"

"You were right about Malfoy."

"You're a brilliant witch, Hermione, but when it comes to matters of the heart, you can be a little thick."

"Tell me something I don't know. But also, pot…kettle, maybe?"

"Maybe."

"Severus?"

"Mmm?"

"Assuming I go to the past successfully, sort Riddle out, and make it back to my own time, what happens? What will I remember from this timeline, what will I remember from the new one that my younger self will live out, and how will the two will coexist in my head?"

"Only a few Unspeakables made the leap back and returned, and most of them they didn't stay very long, and were careful not to change the timeline. Or at least no one noticed that they had."

"So their original timeline and the new timeline were essentially the same. There was nothing to integrate."

"Right."

"You said _most_ of them."

"There was one who inadvertently did something that changed his future, and quite dramatically. He had a misunderstanding with the woman he was married to in his original timeline, and in the new timeline she married someone else, and so did he."

"What happened when he got back?"

"At first, he could only remember his original timeline, and he was pining after a woman who was married to someone else and wanted nothing to do with his wife, whom he he'd never seen before, as far as he remembered."

"So much for keeping the experiment secret then."

"Actually, he did keep it secret. He pined in secret, and pretended everything was all right with the wife he had. He was an Unspeakable, after all. Keeping secrets is what they do."

"That's horrible."

"Eventually he started remembering the modified timeline, and both sets of memories were integrated."

"So he fell back in love with his wife?"

"He remembered enough that he felt some measure of affection for her, but he still loved the wife who was lost to him."

"That is so fucking sad," she says.

"You don't have to do it, you know."

She frowns.

"Hermione, your life isn't terrible. You're alive and healthy, with a good job and a good man who loves you. Things could be worse."

It's true. Her life doesn't seem half so bleak as it did a few weeks ago. Draco is a good man, and she likes kissing him, and she has Severus to talk to, and she feels like she has a purpose now. But if she gives up this idea and makes her peace with the way things are, that purpose will be gone. And even if _her_ life is all right, Harry's and Ron's and Fred's and Luna's and so many other people's aren't.

She looks at Severus, trapped in canvas. His life isn't anywhere near all right. He was abused as a child, bullied as a student, almost killed by a werewolf and told to keep quiet about it while the boy who tried to kill him got off scot free. He loved a girl who didn't love him back, and refused to forgive him for something that was trivial, really. He was lured into a sick fraternity of killers because he was desperate for someone, _anyone_ to accept him. He spent eighteen years wallowing in guilt over Lily's death when it was Riddle to blame, and having Albus fan the flames of that guilt so he could keep sending him back to get tortured by a madman who let his snake kill him.

"Yeah, actually I do have to," she says. "Not because I'm unhappy. My life is fine. How selfish would it be if I was only doing this to make things better for myself?"

"The Gryffindor saviour complex, then?"

"It has nothing to do with House affiliation and you know it. You'd do the same thing in my place. You lived your life for others more than anyone I've ever known."

"And look how that turned out."


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Severus sighs. Hermione is making lists again. That means she's nervous. Or breathing.

"Six bottles of the Time Turner potion and the instructions for brewing more of it, the book with the Horcrux potion, a list of all the Horcruxes and their locations…"

"As if you'd forget any of those."

"Still, it's good to have things written down." She pats her beaded bag. "I have everything packed."

"Including the tent?"

"Gods, no. If camping is involved, I'm throwing in the towel and letting Riddle do his worst."

She rummages in the bag one last time. Invisibility cloak, Marauders' map, potions books, carefully wrapped and warded basilisk fangs, hair dye, straightening potion, contact lenses… She knows everything's there, but she can't help double and triple checking. It calms her nerves. They know where the Time Turner is, just need to get Minerva out of her office long enough for her to get it. She hates the idea of sneaking and lying to Minerva, but they can't take the chance she'll refuse to cooperate.

"Are you sure we should use Peeves to distract her?" she says. "I don't trust him."

"No one trusts him. But he's devilishly good with distractions."

"And I need something to tell your past self so you'll know I'm telling you the truth."

"Why not just let me use Legilimency?"

"Remember what happened the last time you tried that?" It was how he had ended their duel in sixth year, how he drove her far enough into the depths of her fury to cast Cruciatus. When he dared to _invade her mind_ , she snapped.

"I do," he says. "But when you show up telling your story about time travel, I'll probably try."

"I don't want you in my head."

"Somehow, I don't think a good Crucioing will put me in the mood to help."

"So tell me a deep, dark secret no one else knows."

"My favorite color is black."

She rolls her eyes.

"My mother was Hogwarts Gobstones champion."

"That is neither deep nor dark nor secret."

"The person I loved the most as a child was my grandmother, Becky Snape. She died when I was six. She used to bake cinnamon raisin scones. She called me by a pet name so embarrassing that I would not tell you even to bring down the Dark Lord. She gave me a stuffed donkey from which I was inseparable until my father threw it into the fireplace in a drunken rage."

I'm so sorry, she wants to say, but knows how much he'd hate it, so she asks, "What was the donkey's name?"

He grimaces. "Eeyore."

"From Winnie the Poo?"

"Gran used to read me the stories."

And of course the sad, gloomy little donkey was the character who reminded his grandmother enough of him to choose that toy. _Oh, Severus_.

"Remember what I said about your magic when you go back in time," he says.

"That it might take a little time to adjust, but it will, so don't panic."

"Right, so no complicated or taxing spells right away, if you can help it."

"Okay," she says, then, "It's going to be hard."

"Is this just now occurring to you, that going back in time and putting paid to the Dark Lord might not be as easy as getting twelve NEWTs?"

"I know that will be hard. I was thinking about how hard it's going to be to have you hate me again."

"I didn't actually hate you."

"But I annoyed you. In fourth year I was this bushy-haired, buck toothed know-it-all waving my hand in class trying to show everyone how smart I was. You couldn't stand me. Do you remember what you said when Malfoy hexed my teeth that year?"

"Not one of my finer moments. And really, as though I should be commenting on anyone's teeth."

"I guess I'm just trying to prepare myself for you to be that way to me again. It was fine when I was in school, because I didn't know you like this. You weren't my friend, but now you are, and I'm going to miss the Severus I know when I go back. You won't be Severus. You'll be Professor Snape, all looming and glowering and sniping."

"Try not to take it personally."

"Are you my friend now because you're a portrait and the painter couldn't quite get all the nastiness in there? Or are you really you, and when I go back, is _this_ you is going to be there underneath all the hurtful comments and nastiness, just waiting for me to find him again?"

"I wish I could tell you for certain. I think I am still who I was, and that four years of silent brooding –"

"Four years of sulking," she mutters.

"None of your cheek, Miss Granger. As I was saying, I had time to think, gain some perspective about the man I was, the choices I made. When you go back, I won't have that perspective. I'll be a right bastard."

"You won't believe your future self was my friend."

"Probably not. But keep being my friend anyway, if you can stand it."

"I'll try not to annoy you too much."

"Actually, I think you should just be yourself, and not walk on eggshells with me."

"Really?"

"That's how you became my friend, isn't it?"

"Well, yes, but you're a portrait and you couldn't hex me."

"My past self is going to wish I hadn't told you this, but think about which member of the staff was the closest thing I had to a friend when I was alive."

Hermione ponders this for a moment and then it hits her. "Minerva used to be almost as bossy with you as I was with Harry and Ron!"

He looks disgusted.

She beams. "You _like_ bossy women."

"Just don't get carried away. You'll have to walk a fine line. Don't provoke me unnecessarily, but don't be a doormat either."

Hermione is still grinning when Draco comes in, but her smile fades when she remembers that Portrait Severus isn't the only friend she's leaving behind.

"Have you come to your senses yet, Granger?" Draco asks.

"Good luck, Hermione. I'll see you in Minerva's office," Severus says, leaving her and Draco to say goodbye. The plan is for her to leave from there, and Severus will come back to let Draco know everything went off without a hitch.

"Draco," Hermione says, putting her arms around him.

"Don't cry, love. Minerva will get suspicious."

"What if I mess everything up? What if I let you become a racist arsehole?"

"You won't."

"How do you know?"

"Because you promised me. And you keep promises to people you love."

"And I do. I really, really do."

"I know."

"Kiss me?"

He does, and she almost wishes she could say sod it all and stay. Almost.

"Be safe, Hermione."

She nods, picks up her bag and walks out the door.

When she gets to the Headmistress's office, Minerva looks older and frailer than ever. Phineas slips out of his frame to find Peeves, and as Hermione starts talking about the progress her OWL students are making, the expected Patronus comes to summon the Headmistress.

"Why don't you come back after dinner, Hermione?" Minerva says as she moves slowly toward the door.

Well, _that_ buggers things up. Hermione just assumed Minerva would ask her to wait in her office. She picks up the file folders she brought with her and drops them, scattering papers everywhere. "I'm so clumsy!" she says, kneeling on the floor to pick them up. "I'll let myself out as soon as I get these."

She picks up the papers as slowly as she can without being obvious about it, and is still at it when the door closes behind Minerva. She lets out a breath and stuffs the rest of the papers haphazardly into a folder. She walks behind Minerva's desk, pulls the leather chair out and crawls underneath.

"On the left side," Albus says from his frame. She runs her hand over the smooth wood. She can't feel anything, but when she murmurs the password Albus gave her, a small drawer appears. She pulls it open and removes a blue suede pouch. Inside the pouch, a golden Time Turner glistens. She slips the Time Turner's golden chain around her neck, closes the drawer, and stands up to find Minerva glaring at her.

"Professor Granger," Minerva says in her Scary Headmistress Voice.

"I'm sorry. I – "

Peeves tears in through the wall. "I'm sick and tired of being manipulated and used. 'Oh, we'll have Peeves distract her. He's always good for a bit of mischief.' Well, here's some mischief for _you_ , missy!" he shrieks at Hermione and grabs her bag, upending it and scattering everything on the floor.

"No!" Hermione cries, scrambling on the floor to gather all the things she had packed so carefully.

"Perhaps I should explain, Minerva," Albus says.

"I think Professor Granger should explain."

"Albus told me about something he left in the desk, something that can help undo all this…this mess."

"What mess, Professor Granger?"

"This. All of it. Everything." She's babbling, but she can't seem to make herself coherent.

"A Time Turner, Minerva," Albus says.

"No," Minerva says. "Absolutely not. You are _not_ going to muck about with Time, Miss Granger."

She's been demoted from Professor to Miss. This isn't going at all well.

"I'd have thought you knew better than to get involved with some harebrained scheme Albus cooked up. Now give me that Time Turner."

"Albus didn't cook up this particular scheme, Minerva," Severus says. "Hermione and I did, and it is not in the least harebrained."

"Severus!" Minerva gasps.

With Minerva distracted by Severus speaking for the first time since he died, Hermione makes a dash for the door. Minerva doesn't reach for her wand quickly enough, and Hermione is already out the door when she finally grasps it in her left hand.

Hermione's lungs are about to burst as she runs down the corridor and into the first open door she sees. She finds herself in empty living quarters that are being remodeled. She slams and wards the door and shouts "Out!" at the elves hanging wallpaper.

"Miss, we is – "

"You is getting _out_!"

The elves pop away with a terrified squeak and Hermione gives not a single fuck if they do iron their hands because she needs to get out of here _right now_. She feels the wards on the door shimmer as Minerva begins dismantling them. Hermione casts another layer of wards, rather nasty ones, which she feels bad about, but it can't be helped. Minerva would have made short work of them in her prime, but with her injuries from the war, Hermione thinks she's bought herself enough time.

She takes a breath and starts turning the device, counting carefully counting the exact number of turns she needs. As she reaches the last one, the wards glow green and then dissipate. Minerva flings open the door and points her wand, shouting, "Stupefy!" just as Hermione vanishes.


	8. Chapter 8

**Author's Note** : I am now fortunate enough to have a beta reader, as of Chapter 7 (and shame on me for forgetting the author's note acknowledging her then). She is the marvelously talented turtlewexler, and if you have not yet read her nearly-finished WIP, _A Light in the Fog_ , I assure you, you don't know what you're missing. It is by turns hilarious and poignant, and it will be my pleasure to return the favor and beta for her as well.

* * *

Chapter 8

Hermione arrives in the same chambers, but instead of an empty room with half-hung wallpaper, it is paneled and furnished with dark wood and olive green draperies. It looks lived in.

She pulls the invisibility cloak out of her bag and slips it over her head, wanting to get out of this unknown person's quarters in case they're somewhere inside. She moves toward the door and gasps when she nearly steps on something long and black and _moving_.

The person appears not to be home, but his or her familiar is, and that familiar is a snake. Hermione wasn't crazy about snakes to begin with, but she's hated them with a passion since she watched Nagini tear Severus's throat open. She doesn't know whether this snake is poisonous – no one would actually keep a poisonous snake as a familiar, would they? – but she's not taking any chances so she casts a Protego. Except that nothing happens. She tries again, and nothing.

She has no idea how long until her magic is functional again. Severus told her that the Unspeakables who went back experienced everything from just a few seconds to a little over an hour.

"Nice snakey," she murmurs, backing away from it slowly, slowly, slowly. She makes a wide arc around it toward the door and never taking her eyes off the snake. The snake hisses and raises its head up off the ground, swaying back and forth.

She's nearly there when the snake coils as if to spring. Lunging for the door, she pulls it open and stumbles out into the corridor and slams the door behind her.

"Who is that?" a familiar voice growls.

It's Moody with his thrice-damned magical eye. Or, rather, Barty Crouch, Jr. What are the odds she'd run into the one person in the whole damn castle who could see through her invisibility cloak? She takes off down the corridor as fast as she can. Moody/Crouch fires a stunner but she throws herself against the wall and it misses.

She ducks behind a tapestry, hoping it's the one that hides the secret passage. "Lumos," she whispers and a soft light glows. She sags with relief. Her magic is working again, and in the light she can see that this _is_ the alcove with the passage. Slipping inside it, she throws a Confundus charm out past the tapestry and hopes it hits Crouch as she hurries off down the passage.

She exits the passage on the fifth floor, and makes her way quietly up the staircases until she reaches the seventh and the hallway where the Room of Requirement is located. I need a bathroom with a shower, she thinks, and a door in the wall appears.

Inside, she slides to the cool marble floor, her back against the wall, and just breathes. Getting rid of Crouch is the first thing on her list, right after modifying her appearance and convincing Snape to trust her.

She rummages in her bag for the dark Muggle hair dye that should have been right on top but after Peeves dumped everything out, it's all a jumble. She sorts through the shrunken contents of the bag to see what's missing. Her favorite jumper, naturally, half her bloody knickers, and her snacks are gone (she's _starving_ ) but the worst thing is that there's hardly any of the Time Turner potion. She has enough for a few days, but she needs to brew more and for that she needs Severus to let her use his lab and supplies, which means she needs to convince him to help her much quicker than she bargained for. Bugger Peeves all to hell.

It could be worse. The books with the instructions for both potions are there, as are her supplies for changing her appearance.

She applies the dye to the roots of her hair, waits a few minutes, then works the rest of it down into the mass of her curls. After the prescribed time, she washes it out in the shower. Dried and dressed, she uses Narcissa's wonderful straightening potion, which is so much better than Sleekeazy. It's a pity the woman was born an aristocrat. She might have become a magical beauty products mogul instead of a trophy wife.

Hermione puts in the contact lenses that turn her eyes from brown to blue and casts a Tempus charm. Dinner is just starting. The Marauders' map will show her where Snape and Moody are - or it would, if it were in her bag instead of on the floor of Minerva's office where Peeves dumped it. She decides to wait another fifteen minutes and then make her way down to the dungeons under the cloak, hoping Crouch-as-Moody is at dinner.

She sees a few students on her way to Snape's quarters, but no one who can see her. When she gets there she knocks, not really expecting him to be back from dinner yet, but either he finished early or skipped it, because he opens the door right away.

"Who's there?" he demands, and Hermione pulls the invisibility cloak off. "Who are you?"

It's a shock to see him in the flesh, stern and forbidding, after so many weeks chatting easily with his portrait.

"I said, who are you?"

"Helena Greene." It's the false name she and Severus decided on. Close enough to her own to help cover up minor slips of the tongue. "I can explain everything if you'll let me come in."

He doesn't move. God, enough with the bloody glowering and looming, she thinks.

Please," she says. "It's about Riddle."

There's only the barest twitch of a reaction but he steps aside and lets her enter.

"Talk."

"I know this is going to sound crazy –"

"Never a promising beginning."

"I suppose not." She pulls the Time Turner out from under her blouse. "You know what this is."

"Of course."

"The Department of Mysteries successfully modified the Time Turner so that a person could go back up to nine years into the past."

"I've never heard anything about that. Nor do I believe it's possible." Unfortunately, he wouldn't begin his consulting work with the Department of Mysteries until after Riddle's return so this Severus knows nothing about the modified Time Turners.

"It is. They did. Or, rather, they will. The verb tenses get a little confusing."

"I suppose you're going to tell me that you've come here from nine years in the future, Miss Greene?"

"No. Only seven years."

"Oh, well, in that case, _of course_ I believe you."

"Your future self told me some things only he – you – would know so that you would believe me."

He crosses his arms and looks down his formidable nose at her. "Such as?"

"When you were a little boy, the person you loved more than anyone else was your grandmother."

"Many little children love their grandmothers."

"Her name was Becky Snape, and she died when you were six."

"A matter of public record."

"She used to bake you cinnamon raisin scones."

"A common enough thing."

"She used to call you, and I quote, a pet name so embarrassing that you would not tell me even to bring down the Dark Lord."

"Many grandparents call children embarrassing names."

"She gave you a stuffed toy. A donkey."

He sits in an armchair and gestures to the coach.

"Eeyore," she says, sitting down. "From the stories she used to read you." She can tell some of the fight's gone out of him. "You couldn't be parted from it, until it was destroyed."

He swallows, hard. "And how was it destroyed?"

"Your father was drunk and angry and threw it into the fireplace."

Severus looks at her long and hard. Most people squirm when he looks at them like that. This woman doesn't. He has never told a living soul about that stupid toy. How can she possibly know? Even if she has come from the future, which he doesn't for a moment believe, why would his future self tell her something like that? Something so embarrassingly personal?

He continues studying her, waiting for her to fidget or look away or start babbling, but she doesn't. There's something familiar about her, but he doesn't think they've met. He generally remembers faces, as spies who aren't observant don't live very long. He particularly remembers the faces of attractive, age-appropriate women, because he meets so few of them in his line of work. But hers is familiar and yet not quite, and recognition feels just outside his grasp. It's maddening.

"What am I like at 42, Miss Greene?" he says when it becomes apparent that she's planning to outwait him.

"Dead."

He raises his brows.

"You died at 38. It was your portrait I got to know well, not you in the flesh. I knew you when you were alive, but we didn't become friends until after you died."

"We were friends?" he says, his skepticism apparent.

"As much as a living person and a portrait can be, I think."

"How did I die?"

"Tom Riddle's familiar. A snake."

"Well, that's where your story falls apart. Tom Riddle has been dead these thirteen years."

"Then why hasn't that Mark on your arm faded?" she asks, and he glares at her. "Why is it getting darker? Why can you feel it itch sometimes, when you haven't since 1981?"

His eyes bore into hers. "Legilimens," he growls, but she snaps her eyes shut before he gets the word out.

"None of that, Professor Snape," she says, keeping her eyes averted. "Non-consensual Legilimency is the worst kind of violation. It's rape of the mind."

"Spare me your dramatics."

"It's not drama. It's the truth. Maybe you got so used to having Riddle and Dumbledore in your head that you were desensitized to just how awful it is."

"I'm not going to believe you unless I can see for myself."

"You can look at my memories in a Pensieve."

"Memories can be modified."

"You can watch me pull them out right now."

He thinks about it. He's good with memory charms, and is confident that he can spot a modified memory. "All right," he says and gestures to a large Pensieve sitting on a table by the wall.

Hermione walks to the Pensieve and uses her wand to pull one silvery strand after another from her head. When she's finished, she looks at Severus and waits.

"You're coming in with me," he says. "I'm not leaving you alone in my rooms."

The first memory is him and a snake-faced monster in the Shrieking Shack. "Is that…?"

"Riddle, yes. Or what was left of him after seven Horcruxes."

From the perspective of Potter and his two sidekicks hidden in the passageway, Severus watches the thing the Dark Lord has become hiss that he knows Severus is loyal but he has to kill him anyway and no hard feelings. So much for all those long-winded speeches about loyalty and how it would always be rewarded. He flinches as the biggest snake he's ever seen lunges and fastens onto his neck. He watches himself struggle, fall, and bleed.

He'd swear the memory isn't modified. And the only female in that memory is Hermione Granger. The woman who stands beside him watching Memory Severus hemorrhage blood and memories is older. Her hair is darker and straight, and her eyes are the wrong color, but her face… Severus looks at her and then at Memory Granger, who looks to be around eighteen and minus the buck teeth. She's too skinny and there are dark circles under her haunted eyes, but she looks uncannily like the woman who calls herself Helena Greene.

The next memory is Potter and Riddle killing each other in battle. Then there are bodies all over the Great Hall. Bellatrix. Potter's friend Weasley. Lupin. One of the Weasley twins. Severus winces. Gryffindors and hellions they might be, but those boys are the most daring and clever young potioneers he's ever taught. He has to feign contempt, of course, but secretly they're among his favorite students.

Memory Granger is older in the next scene, and no longer haggard and undernourished. Draco is there and he's older, too. Draco and Granger are talking with two portraits, Snape's and Phineas Black's. The memories start and stop abruptly, giving him only disjointed snatches of conversation about Time Turners about Horcruxes.

"Miss Granger," he says when they emerge from the Pensieve. "If that's a glamour, you've gotten quite good at charms."

"Muggle contact lenses and hair dye," she says. "I'm good but not that good. You and Albus and probably Filius would detect any glamour I might use."

"Horcruxes," he says. "The crazy bastard made Horcruxes."

"Yes."

" _Seven_ Horcruxes. I didn't know a soul could be split that many times."

"Not and remain human, it can't."

"When does he come back?"

"This year. In the spring. That's why I came back now. Once we destroy all the Horcruxes –"

"Once _I_ destroy them."

"What?"

"You've delivered the message, Miss Granger. You can return to your time as soon as you give me the complete list of the Horcruxes."

"I didn't come here to deliver a message, Professor."

"You came to destroy Horcruxes," he sneers. "A girl barely out of school."

"A woman who fought in a pitched battle against Riddle and his Death Eaters. A woman who has been teaching Defence Against the Dark Arts at Hogwarts for four years."

He looks at her thoughtfully. "Take the contact lenses out."

She vanishes them to the case in her bag.

Definitely, without a doubt Granger.

"Do you know there's a Death Eater in the castle?" she asks. "Besides you and Karakoff, that is."

"Who?"

"Barty Crouch, Jr."

"He's in Azkaban."

"He's here at Hogwarts, Polyjuiced as Mad-eye Moody."

"Miss Granger –"

"Want to see the memory?"

"Yes."

She pulls it out and drops it in the Pensieve. When they both come back out, Snape collapses back into his chair. "How could I not have seen it?"

"Albus and Minerva and all the rest of them missed it, too."

"But I was a spy. The only reason I'm still alive is because I don't miss things like that."

"Well, in my first go-round here you missed it all the way until April."

"It's bloody embarrassing, is what it is."

"Don't fret. You've had over a decade of your spy skills getting rusty. All the more reason for me to stay and work with you. There are a lot of moving parts in this plan," she says. "A plan your future self helped me come up with, by the way."

"Miss Granger," he begins, giving her his best glower.

"Oh, come off it, Severus. I'm not your student and I'm not afraid of you."

"I don't believe I gave you permission to use my given name."

"Fine. If you don't want to be Severus and Hermione we can be Snape and Granger. But we've got too much work ahead of us to be Professoring and Miss Grangering all over the place."

Who does this girl think he is? Potter? Weasley? But she's not a girl, is she? And his usual intimidation tactics aren't working on her. If he tries more of the same without success, he's going to look ridiculous. Biting back a sigh, he says, "What's your plan, Granger?"

"You expose Crouch and get Albus to hire me as 'Moody's' replacement."

"Hire you?"

"I've been doing the job for years. Why not?"

"Is Moody dead?"

"No, but he's been stuffed in a trunk all these months and is in no condition to teach anybody anything. He's going to need some recovery time. Ideally, just enough for us to finish Riddle off. And I need a reason to be here at Hogwarts. I can't very well go sneaking about under the invisibility cloak all the time and sleep on your sofa, now, can I?"

He stares at her, speechless.

"Though I suppose I'll have to stay here until I have the job. Unless I sleep in the Room of Requirement, but that would involve unnecessary skulking about under the cloak. When's the next staff meeting?"

"Tonight."

"That's convenient. You can get Crouch sorted and recommend me to Albus. Tell him I was educated privately and taught Defence at Ilvermorny. I'm sure he's too lazy to actually check my references. If he was one to check references, we wouldn't have had to put up with some of the incompetent teachers we've had."

"Since the cock-up with Lockhart, he's been having Defence applicants duel with me when they interview."

"Your portrait told me. I'm sure you'll disarm me, but it won't be as easy as you probably think. I'm good enough to pass muster."

"You think so?"

"After looking down the wrong end of Bellatrix Lestrange's wand, it's hard to get too worked up over a demonstration duel. Oh, and Snape? I'm starved. Can you order some tea and sandwiches?"

Looking as though he's been hit with a Confundus charm, Severus calls for an elf while Hermione pulls her lists out of her bag and starts making notes.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

"This is an outrage!" Moody growls.

Severus drums his fingers on Moody's flask and says nothing.

"It's all right, Alastor," Albus says. "If Severus is wrong about you, we'll all have a laugh about it at his expense, won't we? But, well, we just can't take any chances. Constant vigilance and all that."

"I'm not going to sit here and take this," Moody says and gets to his feet.

"Humor us, Alastor," Albus says. There is steel beneath the twinkle in his blue eyes.

Severus fingers his wand and stares across the table at the man who isn't Moody.

Moody eyes the door. He's already sweating, and now he starts to twitch. Severus watches the transformation with a potioneer's eye. The smoothness of the change is determined by the quality of the brew. This one wasn't brewed by a Master, he decides, based on the amount of twitching and convulsing going on.

Once Barty Crouch is trussed up and hauled away by the Aurors and poor old Moody is out of captivity and in the infirmary, Severus goes to the Headmaster's office where Albus, Minerva, Filius and Pomona are waiting for him.

"Any suggestions for a new Defence professor?" Albus asks.

"No one I know would touch that job with a ten foot pole," Filius says.

"Same," Pomona agrees.

"I know someone who might be suitable," Severus says. "Her name is Helena Greene. She taught Defence at Ilvermorny."

"A Yank?"

"No, she's British, but educated privately."

"Owl her and see how soon she can come for an interview."

Albus is delighted when Severus floo calls him later that evening to say that Helena Greene can interview the next morning.

Hermione sits through the usual twinkling and tea and lemon drops in the Headmaster's office the next morning as he asks perfunctory questions about her training and background. He's clearly desperate to fill the position, and doesn't dig too deep.

"Now for the practical portion of the interview," he says jovially, walking to the door and holding it open for her.

Hermione accompanies Albus to the Defence classroom, where Severus is waiting. She pulls out her wand and takes a dueling stance. She doesn't need to win, just last long enough to show Albus that she knows her stuff.

Severus starts off easy, keeps the hexes light, gauging her abilities. When her shield stays strong he steps up the intensity and she matches him, giving as good as she gets, and then he takes it up another level, and she starts to break a sweat.

She and Malfoy practice often, and they're both good, but Severus is better. So much better. It's exhilarating dueling someone who really challenges her. She feels the adrenaline coursing through her, and her breathing becomes audible. He doesn't even look like he's trying, the smug bastard.

Then a light gray hex pulses against her shield, and she feels the thrum of his magic curling around hers. She keeps her hexes light but then he does it again and this time she responds in kind. His eyes widen slightly as he feels the interplay of her magic with his.

She's done a lot of dueling over the years, but the only time she's ever felt that magical chemical reaction was when she dueled Severus. A few days after her first conversation about it with his portrait, when her embarrassment had given way to an intense curiosity, Hermione brought it up again, asking why he didn't think she'd react the way she did to his Dark hexes that day. He told her that for that to happen, usually there had to be either a fairly intense connection between the two people already, or their magic had to be unusually compatible. He'd never experienced it before himself, though he knew people who had, including Bellatrix who had experienced it with Riddle. Wonderful, Hermione thought at the time. That was a club of which she didn't particularly want to be a member.

Now, she aches to feel that high again, and when Severus casts something slightly darker, it's all she can do not to respond in kind. This is a job interview and Albus has seen enough to hire her already, so she focuses just on keeping her shields, which begin to weaken against his onslaught.

Severus narrows his eyes. He can tell she is no longer fighting as hard as she can, and he eases off, circling around her, letting her catch her breath as he watches her intently. He sends a hex, a little dark, nothing too intense, almost a caress rather than an attack. She deflects it easily but doesn't hex back. He does it again, softly, and then again, teasing, as though to whisper, _Come out and play_.

When Hermione responds in kind, a hint of a smile appears on his face and is gone almost at once. He increases the intensity a little, and she matches it, hex and counter-hex, attack and parry, increasing the force behind each spell a step at a time, until she feels his magic pressing against hers, and her own respond. She can hear it, like music, with two distinct tones that harmonize to create something wholly new and almost too beautiful to bear.

A look of wonder appears on Severus's face, so fleeting that she nearly misses it, and then he's occluding, and the music stops. The only sound is Hermione's breathing as she defends against a series of ordinary but brutally strong hexes. Then her shields shimmer and dissolve, and her wand is in his hand.

"Marvelous!" Albus cries. "Almost no one can last that long against Severus. You're hired, Professor Greene."

"Thank you, Headmaster," she says, wiping her brow. She starts to push her sleeves up, then stops. Severus notices.

"This will be your classroom, and your office is through that door," Albus says, pointing. "Your living quarters are on the other side of the office. The elves are clearing out your predecessor's things at present, and your rooms should be ready within the hour. I don't suppose you can start tomorrow?"

"I can, actually," she says.

"Splendid," he says. "Severus, would you show her around the castle, help her get her bearings? We'll see you at dinner in the Great Hall tonight, Helena," he says, not waiting for Severus to agree. "You don't mind if I call you Helena, I hope? I'm Albus. We're all informal here."

"I'll see you at dinner then, Albus," Hermione says.

When they're alone in the classroom, Severus gestures to her arm. "What are you hiding there, Granger?"

So not _everyone_ is informal. She pushes up her sleeve. "Souvenir from Bellatrix Lestrange. She gets out of Azkaban when Riddle comes back."

"I'd just as soon she stay where she is," he says blandly, still occluding.

"Then what say we head to the Room of Lost Things and make short work of the first Horcrux?" Hermione says. She wants to talk about the interplay of their magic during the duel, but since this is Professor Snape and not Portrait Severus, she holds her tongue.

On their way to the Room of Lost Things, he asks, "How did you learn to duel like that?"

She knows he only means her technique, so she replies, "I had a good teacher. For one year anyway."

"Who?"

"You."

"He finally lets me teach Defence?"

"In my sixth year, yes. You taught Potions for my first five years."

"And your seventh?"

"You were Headmaster, and I was hunting Horcruxes. It was a particularly bad year for both of us."

"Headmaster? What happened to Albus? And why not Minerva?"

"Albus was dead because you killed him."

"I wouldn't –"

"You only did it because he ordered you to."

"Riddle did?"

"No. Albus. It's a long and complicated story, but it isn't going to happen this time around. I can tell you about it later, but for right now, let's destroy a little bit of Tom Riddle's black and rotten soul," she says, stopping in front of a blank wall and thinking about the diadem.

When the door appears, they enter the enormous, cluttered room and Hermione walks straight to the place she and Harry and Ron found the diadem the first time. She levitates it off the bust and onto the floor, and takes a wrapped bundle out of her bag. She unwards and unwraps it, and holds up a basilisk fang. "Would you like to do the honors?" she asks.

"Where did you get that?" he demands.

"From the dead basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets," she says. "And if you're starting to feel as angry and depressed as I am right now, that's the Horcrux. It messes with your mind, starts making you think awful, ugly things, so better be quick about it."

He takes the fang from her and plunges it through the largest stone in the diadem. It emits a tortured shriek and a twisted column of black smoke, and Severus feels the fear and anger and insecurity drain out of him.

"One down, six to go," he says.

"No, one was destroyed in my second year, and he doesn't make the snake a Horcrux until he comes back this year."

"So four left. What are they?"

She's not ready to tell him about Harry and the Horcrux potion just yet. "Destroying Dark Lords takes a lot out of a person," she says, "and I still have lessons to plan. Can I fill you in on the rest tomorrow?"

He nods and vanishes the remains of the Horcrux. They leave the room and the door disappears behind them.


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

It's surreal when the fourth year Gryffindors and Slytherins walk into her classroom. All these kids who are grown up or dead in her world. When Harry and Ron and her younger self come in, Hermione concentrates on keeping her features neutral.

After introducing herself and calling each of their names, ostensibly so she'll know who's who, she demonstrates the Protego charm and tells them to pair up. She has one of them cast the shield and the other send mild stinging hexes. She did this with her own fourth years earlier in the year, but Barty Crouch was having too much fun Imperiusing spiders to keep up with the syllabus.

They're all paired up with members of their own House, she sees as she walks around observing. She tells the pairs to switch who is protecting and who is attacking, then stops them to demonstrate the charm again herself, pointing out things some of them were doing wrong.

"We're going to change up the pairings and do it again," she says. "Greengrass and Finnegan, Weasley and Nott, Bullstrode and Brown." Sulkily, because they see she's pairing them with rival House members, they pair up as she calls their names. "Patil and Crabbe, Zabini and Potter, Thomas and Goyle, Malfoy and Granger. Is that it?" She looks around. She hadn't meant to pair Neville with that bint, but there's nothing for it now. "Longbottom and Parkinson."

She has them take turns attacking and defending for a couple of rounds, then tells them, "All right, now you're going to attack and defend at the same time. Cast your shield and keep it up while you try to hex your opponent." This is much harder, and there are frustrated yelps of mild pain from around the classroom.

"Stop. Nott and Weasley, up here please," she says. "Not all of you are evenly matched with your opponents, but from what I can see, these two are. Gentlemen, protect and attack, please." They do, and the class watches. She stops them a few times to correct something one or the other is doing, then has them continue until they're both slightly out of breath.

"Nice work," she says. "Malfoy and Granger, your turn."

She watches her younger self duel a teenage Malfoy who hates her. There's more heat behind his hexes than there was in either Nott's or Ron's, but her younger self is giving as good as she gets. "Good," she says, stopping them before anyone gets hurt.

She calls up each pair in turn, calling a few of them by the wrong name or hesitating before getting it right so they won't wonder how she knows all of their names right off.

After they've all had a turn, she says, "In an actual battle, you might be outnumbered. Potter and Zabini, both of you attack me while I defend." They do, and she parries them easily. "Crabbe, join in." Now she has to work. "Patil, you too." She's breathing harder now, and her brow is damp. "Good," she says, stopping them. "Any volunteers want to try that?"

"Against four?" Harry asks.

"Against two to start with."

A few hands rise, all Gryffindor, including young Hermione's. Naturally.

"Thomas," she says. "Longbottom and Parkinson to attack." It's over in a heartbeat, poor Dean cowering as an onslaught of stingers hits him.

"Harder that way, isn't it?" she asks.

"Gods, yes," Dean gasps.

She has the other volunteers try, and as expected, Harry and her younger self hold off the attack longer than anyone else.

"No one else?" she asks, glancing at Malfoy, who nods and comes to the front of the class, where he does a fairly impressive job holding off Finnegan and Greengrass before Hermione calls a halt.

"In battle conditions, you're going to be fighting off any number of attackers," she tells them. "It won't be like a classroom duel. No rules. No limits. It will be ugly and painful and dangerous, and you need to be prepared."

Lavender raises her hand. When Hermione nods, she says, "Professor, you talk like we're _going_ to be in a battle. There hasn't been a war for ages."

"As the Romans used to say, Miss Brown, if you wish for peace, prepare for war."

With all her students tired and somewhat battered, Hermione spends the rest of the class quizzing them on theory to determine what that wanker Crouch did and didn't teach them. She sighs inwardly at the way her younger self's hand shoots up every single time.

"I'd like each of you to come see me in office hours this week so I can get to know you," she says at the end of class. "I'm sending a parchment around so you can sign up for a time slot. It is not optional," she adds when she sees the sneer Malfoy directs at Zabini. "Ten House points will be taken if you don't show up, five if you're late."

When she looks at the parchment as they're filing out, she sees her own more rounded, youthful signature at the top of the page.

"How was your first day?" Severus asks when she comes to his lab after dinner.

"Fred and George were a lot funnier when I wasn't teaching them."

He smirks. "The Weasley twins require creative pedagogy."

"What was your creative solution?"

"I had them watch memories of the worst potions accidents I'd ever seen in a Pensieve during detention."

"And?"

"After I vanished the vomit, we came to a _modus vivendi_. They would save their mischief for Minerva and Filius, and I'd help them with the nefarious brews they were concocting outside class."

"A beneficial arrangement all around."

"Those boys should have been sorted into my House."

"You _like_ them!"

"Nonsense," he mutters gruffly. "I'd be better able to keep an eye on them."

Hermione hides her smile and pulls a parchment from her bag. "So the Time Turner potion. I brewed enough for several weeks, but had a slight mishap en route and I need to brew more."

"I developed this?" he asks, looking at the instructions. "Bloody brilliant, if I do say so myself."

"It is. But you were still working on it when the Time Turners were supposedly destroyed. Your portrait said he thought it could be improved to extend the length of time I can stay here."

"You don't need more than a few months, I thought?"

In truth, she's nervous about what she'll find when she goes back, and she's in no hurry. She wants to spend more time with Malfoy, because of the promise she made, and with Snape (he's not Severus yet, she reminds herself). She doesn't want to go back to a future where they barely know each other. "I don't think I will, but you never know. And doesn't the thrill of discovery make you want to improve it anyway?"

He gathers the necessary ingredients, setting some of them in front of Hermione and keeping the rest for himself. She sees he's given her the easiest ones to prepare. She sets to work, feeling his eyes on her as she slices and crushes and minces. When he pushes two more ingredients, more volatile ones, in front of her, she feels a flush of satisfaction.

She likes this, working side by side in his lab. After all the time she spent with his portrait, she feels as though she knows him, but it's one sided. He doesn't know her, at least not as anything more than an irritating student. In her time, they teased, they laughed, they bantered with Malfoy and Black and with each other. They conversed so easily, and about almost anything. Even about Dark Magic and sex and what happened the time they dueled.

She knows Severus felt what she did during her demonstration duel, but he hasn't mentioned it. Neither has she. But it hangs there between them, unacknowledged.

When it happened in her sixth year, they didn't acknowledge it either, beyond his vague apology. She was his student and it was best forgotten, or at least ignored, by both of them. So they ignored it. Then he killed Albus and became Headmaster, and she hunted Horcruxes and was tortured. Then he died.

This time, she wants to explore it. He's not her teacher and he's not a portrait. He's a man who, if they're going to brew the Horcrux potion, is going to take her to bed. Assuming she ever works up the nerve to tell him, that is.

"So, five Horcruxes," he says.

"Yes."

"What are they?"

"Rowena Ravenclaw's diadem, which we've already destroyed, a locket that belonged to Salazar Slytherin, a cup owned by Helga Hufflepuff, a ring that was a Gaunt family heirloom…"

"Gaunt. I'm not sure I know that family."

"Riddle's mother and her brother were the last of them."

"Diadem, locket, cup, and ring. That's four. What's the fifth?"

"An accidental Horcrux that Riddle created when he tried to kill Harry and was destroyed himself." She pauses. "A living Horcrux."

"You mean…?"

"Yes. Harry _is_ the Horcrux. The soul fragment is lodged in his scar."

Severus draws in a breath. "In your time…"

"Harry had to die to kill Riddle."

"Did Albus know?"

"He suspected, and by the end he knew for certain. You didn't learn until just before you died that you'd spent the last seven years protecting a boy Albus had essentially raised for slaughter."

"If I have to kill him again, I'll enjoy it this time."

"The truly awful part is that Harry didn't have to die at all. There's a potion to remove a Horcrux from a living host. You had learned of it by then, but not in time to save Harry."

"Do you know how to brew it?"

"Your portrait coached me through brewing the base. We'll have no trouble with it."

"Why just the base?"

"Because that's the tricky part. The rest is easy, and no sense wasting rare ingredients when we couldn't test the finished potion anyway. Not like there are human Horcruxes just sitting around all over the place."

"Show me the instructions."

"They're in a book back in my quarters," she lies. She's not ready to tell him yet what brewing that potion will require. His portrait seemed to think he wouldn't be averse to the idea, but she's not sure. He's not comfortable with her yet, and she'd rather put the conversation off.

"Not in that bag where you carry practically everything you own?"

"Not at the moment."

He stares at her. She's acting strangely, and he wants to know why. He lets it go for now since they're getting to a dicey part of the brewing process, but he files it away to think about later.

When the potion needs to rest before they add the final ingredient, Hermione says, "We'll need to brew Polyjuice next."

"Who – or _what_ – will one of us be impersonating, and why?"

"Lucius and Cissy are going to Gringotts to fetch a Horcrux from dear mad Bella's vault."

He looks at her the way he looks at students who give wrong answers in Potions class.

"It was your idea. Your portrait's anyway."

"It was?"

"It was. He said you wouldn't have a problem getting some of their hair. Though do mind which is which, please. Being Narcissa will be bad enough, but I don't at all fancy the idea of being Lucius." What if they had to stay Polyjuiced long enough to have to use the loo? Having Lucius Malfoy's dick in her hand is _not_ on Hermione's bucket list.

"I'm not the one with a history of mixing up hairs for Polyjuice," Severus drawls. "At least Lucius would be the right _species_."

"Ha bloody ha."

"Will we need Polyjuice to get the ring and the locket as well?"

"No, those should be easy. I know exactly where Kreacher has the locket hidden at Grimmauld."

"Kreacher?"

"Sirius Black's horrid house elf. I can slip past them using the invisibility cloak and be in and out in no time."

"You mean we can."

"We wouldn't both fit under the cloak. You're too tall. I can do it on my own."

"Or I could do it on my own."

He's not _much_ of a control freak, is he? she thinks. "And if something should go wrong and Sirius should stumble on whoever's getting the locket, I'm the better choice to talk my way out of it. He likes me."

"I'll just bet he does," Severus mutters.

"What's that?"

"I could always kill him if he caught me."

"Reason number 1,347 why I should go. You can get the ring while I'm getting the locket. It's in the abandoned Gaunt house where Riddle's mother grew up. Albus just walked in and took it, from what Harry told me. But you can't put it on. It's cursed."

"What kind of dunderhead do I look like, that I'd put on a Horcrux ring?"

"Albus was exactly that dunderhead. He was dying of the curse when he made you swear to kill him if Draco couldn't."

"The man is a menace."

"The Board of Governors shouldn't let him within a mile of children," Hermione says, stifling a yawn.

"Perhaps I'll have a word with Lucius," Severus says, extinguishing the flame under the cauldron. "Get some sleep. I'll bottle it when it's cooled and you can get it tomorrow. And don't forget that book with the Horcrux potion."


	11. Chapter 11

**Author's Note** : The inimitable turtlewexler, author of the delightful _A Light in the Fog_ , proofread this chapter but then I made a couple of changes after she did.

I've been on an every other day posting schedule for a while, and plan to keep that up, unless I get impatient and decide to post chapters more quickly, as I'm further ahead on completed chapters than usual. The story is almost completely written now, with just a few holes to fill in here and there.

 **Disclaimer** : All rights belong to Ms. Rowling.

* * *

Chapter 11

When Hermione's younger self comes to her office hours appointment, the Pensieve Hermione borrowed from Severus is sitting on her desk.

"Have you ever used one of these, Miss Granger?"

"No."

"But you know what it is?"

"A Pensieve."

"There are two memories I'd like you to watch with me," she says, and pulls a silvery strand from her head. When it's swirling in the Pensieve, she pulls her younger self down and they both fall into the memory of the previous day's Defence class when the students fending off two attackers.

"Assess your performance, Miss Granger," she says when they've finished viewing the memory.

"I didn't hold them off for long, but I did better than everyone else except Harry."

"Is your performance in Defence usually this good?"

"Yes."

"And how do you perform in your other classes?"

"Very well."

"What would you say your professors think of you, Miss Granger?"

"They think I'm a good student."

"Only good?"

"An excellent student. All but one of them, that is."

"Professor Snape?"

"Yes."

"Miss Granger, of the Slytherins, who would you say is the best student in Defence in your year?"

"Malfoy."

"And in Arithmancy?"

"Nott."

"Charms?"

"Greengrass, or maybe Nott."

"Transfiguration?"

"Zabini."

"Potions?"

"Malfoy."

"How do you know?"

"Well, you can just tell."

"And their professors, who mark their papers and exams, they'd be in even less doubt about the merits of those students?"

"Yes, Professor," she says, clearly confused about where this is going.

Hermione pulls out another memory and drops it into the Pensieve. "Let's look at this one, shall we?"

It's the part of the lesson where "Professor Greene" quizzed the class on the material they'd been taught previously. Young Hermione watches herself practically vibrating with eagerness to answer every question, while Nott and Zabini and Malfoy's expressions and body language show when they know the answer, but subtly, without the hand-waving.

When she emerges from the Pensieve, young Hermione is clearly embarrassed. "I understand," she murmurs.

"And do you understand that Professor Snape knows exactly what your abilities are? That he knows as well as Professors Flitwick or McGonagall or Vector just how gifted you are?"

She nods. "Thank you for showing me that, Professor. I hated seeing it, but I'm glad I did."

"Somehow, I thought you might be," Hermione says as she watches her younger self walk out of the office.

It's funny, but her younger self seems prettier than she remembers being. Yes, her front teeth are rather prominent, but the overall effect isn't what she remembers seeing in the mirror when she was fifteen. Was she particularly insecure, or are all teenage girls blinded to their loveliness by the anxieties that plague them?

Her former classmates seem so different from how she remembers them when they sit in her office talking to a professor they've just met. It's strange having Lavender and Parvati speak to her respectfully rather than giggling and ignoring her.

It's odd seeing Ron at fifteen, when her fifteen-year-old self had a mad crush on him. He just seems like a slightly awkward teenage boy, and she can't quite remember what made her see more. Now, she feels an intense love and gratitude, but they're the feelings of a woman who saw him take a killing curse for her, not those of a girl who hopes he might kiss her someday.

When Harry comes in, she's almost overcome with tenderness for the boy she spent so many years trying to protect, but who was doomed from the start. When they were in school she was so used to the scar on his forehead that she stopped noticing it. Now, knowing that a fragment of Riddle's soul is lodged there, she can hardly bear to look at it. But once she and Snape have destroyed the Horcrux, it will be just a scar, and Harry will have a normal life. His worst problem will be a bitchy aunt and bully of a cousin. The skulking about he and Ron and her younger self do under the invisibility cloak will be just normal teenage hijinks. They'll use the Marauder's Map to sneak into Hogsmeade, not to avoid Death Eaters.

 _The Marauder's Map!_ How could she have forgotten about that bloody map? She's only been in the castle a couple of days, but it's only a matter of time before they notice two Hermione Grangers on the map, and one of them where Helena Greene should be.

She can't go get it now, because the fourth years are all out of class. There's a Quidditch game tomorrow and she can go to Harry's dorm room then and get it. She just has to hope that he doesn't have occasion to look at it before then.

When Neville when he comes for his appointment, she tries to set her worry about the map aside, since there's nothing she can do about it now. "You did well in class," she tells Neville.

"Thanks, Professor."

"How are you doing in your classes, generally, Mr. Longbottom?"

"Well enough in Defence, really well in Herbology, not so well in Potions."

"Professor Sprout tells me you're quite talented in Herbology, that you could earn a Mastery someday if you wanted to."

"My grandmother wants me to be an Auror."

"Your grandmother got to choose her career. You get to choose yours."

"You haven't met my grandmother."

She has, actually, and knows exactly what he means, but lets him continue.

"Not that it matters." He looks defeated. "For either one I'd need a NEWT in Potions, and I'll be lucky if I pass the OWL."

"You dislike Potions?"

"I dislike –" He stops, realizing he shouldn't blurt out that he dislikes the professor. "I'm just not good at it. I mean, if Hermione wasn't my lab partner and didn't help me, I'd be blowing up cauldrons left and right."

"How do you know?"

"Everyone knows I'm terrible at it. Professor Snape says I'm a complete dunderhead."

"Professor Snape calls most of his students dunderheads, as I understand?"

"Yeah, but especially me."

"Mr. Longbottom, I'd like you to do me a favor. Will you?"

"What, Professor?"

"I'd like you to try partnering with another of your classmates, one who isn't quite as good at Potions as Miss Granger, one who won't act as your safety net."

"What if I blow up my cauldron?"

"Then you'll learn from the experience."

"Professor Snape would go spare."

"So?"

"We'll, he'd…"

"He'd what? Yell at you? Call you names? He already does that. Give you detention? So what? So you scrub cauldrons or slice flobberworms. Professors aren't allowed to hex students. So really, what is the absolute worst thing that Professor Snape could do to you?"

Neville looks at her, realization dawning.

"And aren't a few evenings scrubbing cauldrons worth learning how to brew the things you're growing in Herbology? Using them in potions is mainly why you're learning to grow them in the first place, isn't it?"

"It is."

"Then go in there and make some mistakes and _learn_. Let Professor Snape say what he likes and have you slice and dice disgusting things in detention, but let him _teach_ you, because he will if you let him."

"I will," Neville grins. "I'm not scared of flobberworms."

"Good man."

He grins. "Thanks, Professor."

She's smiling as she watches him leave, and still smiling when Malfoy shows up for his appointment, right on time.

"Mr. Malfoy, thank you for coming."

The look on his face says, _I didn't have a choice, did I?_ but he sits down and says merely, "Of course, Professor."

"You're good at Defence. One of the best in the class."

He nods in acknowledgement.

"You and Miss Granger did exceptionally well holding your shields while attacking each other."

"Why did you pair me with Granger, Professor?"

"After observing the class as originally paired, I thought she'd likely to give you a run for your money."

He says nothing, just looks like he's eaten something that's gone off.

"You dislike Miss Granger."

"Everyone dislikes Granger."

"Everyone, or everyone in your House?"

"I'm not terribly concerned with the opinions of people outside my House."

"Because she's Muggleborn?"

"Among other things."

"Why are you a wizard and not a Squib?"

"What's that supposed to mean? Professor," he adds.

"Why are magical children sometimes born to Muggle parents, and why are Squibs born to magical parents?"

"No one knows."

"Why are you blond?"

He looks startled, then says, "I suppose because my parents are blond."

"Why is your mother blond?"

He hesitates.

"Your aunt Bellatrix had black hair, I believe?" she says.

"Has. She's still alive."

 _Oops_ , she thinks, _careful, Hermione_. "Your mother's parents, what color was their hair?"

"What does my grandparents' hair have to do with anything, Professor?"

"Humor me, Mr. Malfoy."

With growing impatience, he says, "My grandmother's was black and my grandfather's was brown."

"And yet your mother is blond. Why?"

"Who knows? And who cares? Blond hair doesn't make someone magical, Professor."

"Muggles do."

"What?"

"You asked who knows. I realize it was a rhetorical question, but I'm answering it. Muggles know exactly why your mother is blond. They know because of a science called genetics. Genes are what determine your hair and eye color, your height, whether you're stocky or slim, freckled or not. They determine how intelligent you are, but not what you do with your intelligence. Muggles know a great deal about genes because they've studied them extensively. I strongly suspect that genes determine whether a person is magical or not, and how powerful the person's magic is. I believe there are multiple genes that code for magical ability, which explain blood status – which should more properly be called genetic status because it has nothing to do with blood – as well as the level of magical power and different degrees of aptitude people have with different types of magic."

He stares at her, his mind racing.

"This is just a hypothesis, of course," she continues. "I don't know it for a fact because no wizard or witch has collected any data to test it, or even studied genetics, to my knowledge."

"Why hasn't anyone?"

"Because of prejudice against Muggle science, I imagine."

"How do you know so much about it? Are you a Muggleborn?"

"Halfblood," she says, knowing she'll lose whatever credibility she has with him if she answers otherwise. She pulls a book off the shelf behind her and puts it on the desk in front of him. _Mendelian Genetics_ , the spine reads. "If you're interested."

Malfoy hesitates for a moment, then picks the book up.

Hermione checks the time. "I'm expecting Miss Bullstrode any minute, but I've enjoyed our chat. Keep the book as long as you like, and feel free to stop by during my office hours if you'd like to discuss it."

He doesn't say he will, but doesn't say he won't either. Instead, he nods in the courtly pureblood way that he's let fall by the wayside in her time, and walks out.


	12. Chapter 12

**Author's Note** : To celebrate hitting triple digits in reviews (thank you for #100, SeaWitch225), and because the writing has been going faster lately, I am posting a bonus chapter today. This chapter marks about the halfway point in the story. Thank you all **_so much_** for your encouragement and kind words. It makes writing so much fun. Thanks as always to turtlewexler for beta-ing.

* * *

Chapter 12

"What did you do to yourself?" Severus asks when she arrives that night to begin brewing the Polyjuice.

"What do you mean?"

"You didn't wave your hand in the air once today. And you worked with Weasley instead of Longbottom."

"I wish you'd stop calling her 'you' – I'm a grown woman and a member of staff and she's your student."

"The pronouns get as tricky as the verb tenses."

Hermione doesn't think they do at all, and concentrates on her chopping.

"Was my Pensieve involved?" he asks, noticing that she's brought it back.

"Sometimes people can tell us things until they're blue in the face but we can't really believe them until we see with our own eyes."

They prepare ingredients in silence for a while, then he says, "I'm thinking of having you – her – work with Malfoy. Now that she's minding her own business and not annoying people."

"He won't like that."

"He's a spoiled little wanker."

"He is that."

"But he isn't in your time."

"No. In my time he's been through hell and back and it made him a better man."

"That won't happen this time, if we do this right."

"He was worried about that."

"Rightly so. He runs with the wrong crowd, just as I did at his age." He shakes his head. "But a Gryffindor girl as my lab partner didn't keep me from going bad."

"Maybe she was the wrong Gryffindor girl."

Severus frowns at her. "Explain yourself."

"What you said was stupid and hurtful but you were a teenage boy. Teenage boys say stupid, hurtful things all the time. And teenage girls forgive them. If Lily Evans chose to end a friendship of that many years over something so trivial, that's on her, not you."

He glares at her. Does this insufferable woman know _everything_ about him? _How_ does she know? Does becoming a portrait mean you lose all sense of privacy and impulse control? After a few minutes of doing to a toad's tongue what he'd like to do to hers, he mutters, "It wasn't trivial."

"It was. Malfoy called me Mudblood for six years and I forgave him – as I told your portrait, who was still wallowing in guilt over that bloody Evans girl even after he was _dead_."

"Don't you _dare_ speak of her that way. You know nothing about her. You know nothing about _any_ of this," he says in a voice that would have terrified her five years ago.

"The prophecy, you mean?"

"I killed her."

"Tom Riddle killed her. You were just one of the weapons he used."

"It was my fault. _Mine_."

"You had some share in the responsibility, but your guilt for decades after was all out of proportion," she says gently. "And Albus Dumbledore fed that guilt so he could turn you into a weapon of his own. He used you as cruelly as Riddle ever did, and you let him, because you blamed yourself for something that was never more than tangentially your fault."

Severus chops fluxweed as though the fate of the world depends on the uniformity of the pieces. Hermione watches him, understanding that he clings to his guilt as the only part of Lily Evans that's left to him, and he can't let it go.

"You're here to kill Riddle," he says in clipped tones a few minutes later, "not to redeem the tormented Byronic hero you seem to think I am."

"I am here to kill Riddle," she agrees, "but also to try to keep Malfoy from becoming a racist arsehole. Also, if you'll let me, to be your friend while you're a living man instead of a dead portrait."

They continue brewing and the silence stretches out between them, but it doesn't feel awkward or oppressive. She's so different from the Granger he teaches in Potions class. She's calm and self-assured and doesn't seem bothered in the least by anything he says to her. She says she wants to be his friend, but in truth she behaves as though she already is.

But _why_? She's going back to her time as soon as the Horcruxes are destroyed. What's the point? He won't see her – _this_ her – for another seven years. He'll go on teaching her younger self and she'll go on breaking rules with Potter and earn a dozen NEWTs and marry some Weasley or other. She won't be the woman who lost everyone she loved in a war and befriended a dead man because there was no one else left.

And he isn't the man she knew in her time. He's no hero. He hasn't risked his life, faced torture and death to work for victory over the Dark Lord. He hasn't let the entire wizarding world think he was murdering scum while he secretly protected students from torture. He hasn't died to save them all. All he's done is kill the only woman he ever loved.

He won't do any of those things if they succeed in destroying all the Horcruxes. And he won't have to stay here at Hogwarts, waiting for Dark Lord's return. He can leave, start his own business, start a new life, never see Albus or Potter or any of them again if he doesn't want to. Or Granger.

He glances at her as she stirs the contents of her cauldron, concentrating on the number of stirs. The steam from the potion is making her straightened hair start to curl, and she looks more like the Granger he saw in her memories. More like the girl who will grow up and forget him, and less like the woman whose magic twined sinuously around his own as they dueled.

He's never experienced that before, but he's read about it, and heard about it from others who have. As different as they are, their magic shouldn't be that compatible, and yet clearly it is. Does she know what happened? The Granger who is his student is an open book, displaying her emotions for anyone who cares to look. Not the adult Granger. She's not practicing Occlumency, but she has learned to school her features.

The rod stills its clockwise motion and begins stirring the brew anti-clockwise. Granger resumes her silent counting.

When they dueled, he could feel her desire, but he's seen no hint of it since then. Did he imagine it? He could suggest dueling practice, and find out. He extinguishes the flame under his cauldron. What would be the point? No, the sooner she goes back to her time, the better.

"Know what I feel like doing, Granger?" he asks as she removes her cauldron from the flame.

"What do you feel like doing, Snape?"

"Driving a basilisk fang through a piece of Tom Riddle."

"What, now?"

"No time like the present. I'll get the ring while you get the locket."

"All right," she says, and hands him a basilisk fang.

They walk in silence to the castle gates.

"Try to stay away from the mutt. You don't want to get fleas," he says, and apparates away.


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter 13

Hermione apparates into the library at Grimmauld Place under the invisibility cloak, hoping to find it empty, but no such luck. Sirius is sitting slumped in an armchair drinking firewhiskey and his elf is carrying a tray into the room.

"Kreacher has brought Master's tea."

"I don't want any fucking tea." Sirius slurs.

The elf pays him no mind. "Kreacher has brought Master's favorite jam tarts," he says, putting one on a plate and pouring tea.

Sirius takes a bite of the tart and drinks some tea. He mutters obscenities under his breath when Kreacher picks up the glass and firewhiskey bottle, but doesn't protest.

Hermione moves quietly past them to the door and down the hallway to the kitchen. Kreacher is right behind her so she ducks into a corner and waits. He is puttering around, walking back and forth in front of the doorway Hermione needs to go through to get to where the elf keeps his pilfered treasures. She leans against the wall, waiting.

Half an hour later, with her back aching and her feet falling asleep, she hears a crash that sounds like Sirius has upset his tea tray. Kreacher hurries off to see to Master, and Hermione makes a dash through the door to Kreacher's lair.

It's disgusting. That elf is a hoarder. She paws through the detritus of years' worth of petty theft before she sees a glint of gold, and pulls the locket out of the mess.

"Thief!" Kreacher shrieks. "Mudblood thief!"

Hermione stuffs the locket into her pocket and starts to apparate but Kreacher is quicker. The elf grabs her and apparates her to the library, where Sirius squints at her with bloodshot eyes. She glamours away the straight, dark hair and blue eyes.

"Hermione?"

"Hello, Sirius."

"'Swonderful to see you, Mione."

"Master, this Mudblood was –"

"How many times have I told you not to use that word, you wretched little beast?"

"Kreacher is sorry, Master. But the Mu– the thief was stealing Kreacher's treasures."

"You mean the treasure Kreacher himself stole from the House of Black after Master Regulus died?" Hermione says. "That treasure?"

"Kreacher was only keeping it safe, Master."

"What treasure?" Sirius asks.

"This," Hermione says, holding up the locket. Sirius reaches his hand out. "I wouldn't if I were you. I'll explain why, but can you ask Kreacher to give us some privacy first, please?"

"Out, Kreacher!" he orders, then tilts his head to the side, looking at Hermione. "You look different. And so pretty." He stares at her tits, then frowns. "How old are you, Mione?"

"Sirius," she begins, then stops. What's the point, really? "Obliviate," she says, and apparates away.

There's no one in sight when she arrives at the gates, so she takes a basilisk fang out of her bag and puts paid to one more piece of Tom Riddle before walking back to the castle. The Horcrux was already making her feel unsettled and hopeless. She remembers how awful she and Harry and Ron felt during those long months in the tent. She wonders whether maybe Kreacher was a lovely, cheerful elf before he took a Horcrux back to his sleeping nest.

Severus is in his lab when she gets there and tosses the blackened, broken locket on the table next to a ring in a similar state.

"Feel better?" Hermione asks.

"Much."

"Two Horcruxes in one day," she says. "That's definitely a record."

"You've told me the original version, with the escaping on the backs of dragons and whatnot, and, well, it all feels a bit anticlimactic, doesn't it?"

"If having your throat ripped out by a snake with a bit of Riddle's soul inside is the kind of climax you're after…"

"Not exactly. But riding a dragon rather appeals."

"You sound like Malfoy," she says, a little sadly, he thinks.

"You sound like you miss him."

"I do. _My_ Malfoy, not the boy in my class, who may grow up to be an entirely different sort of Malfoy."

 _Her_ Malfoy? She's always talked about him as though he were a friend, but there's something wistful in the way she says _my Malfoy_ , something that suggests he was more than a friend.

"You still haven't given me the book that has the Horcrux potion in it," he says.

She's tense again, he notices. _Why?_ She pulls it out of her bag and opens it to page marked by a black silk ribbon. She slides the book across the table and watches him as he reads.

He looks up at her. "Virgin's blood? Do you know what that costs? If you can even find a supplier?"

"I brought it with me."

"Where did you get it?"

"What difference does it make? I have it."

Her own, he supposes. She knows enough about potions not waste such a valuable ingredient by not harvesting it when the opportunity presented itself. She's right about the brewing itself. It isn't difficult. He looks at the book without seeming to read it, his index finger stroking his lower lip. "We could brew it now."

"After the cup," she says. "And I really would like to work on the Time Turner potion. If there are complications getting the cup, I might have to stay here longer than planned."

"I should think you'd want to get that thing out of Potter sooner rather than later."

"He had it for three more years in my time. It only started doing real damage in our fifth year. When will you be able to get some of Lucius and Narcissa's hair? Your future self seemed to think it wouldn't be a problem."

He pushes two bottles across the table toward her. One is labeled N, the other L.

"When did you go?"

"I actually had both of them on hand already." At her raised brow, he says, "You never know when you might need that sort of thing in my line of work."

"You're almost obsessively well prepared."

"Says the woman who keeps virgin's blood on hand."

She flushes and looks away.

"And after the last Horcrux?" he asks.

"I go back, I suppose."

"And we all live happily ever after?"

She's quiet for a moment. "I have no idea."


	14. Chapter 14

**Author's Note:** Your reviews make me smile. One (from someone who wasn't logged in so I couldn't reply) that said, "I need your chapters to be 5,830,726 words long, please and thank you" (shades of Ron Swanson) made me laugh. The story is almost completely written now so I'll be posting more often till the end, provided I don't hit any more plot snags. A thousand thank yous to turtlewexler (hint, hint: I need my **A Light in the Fog** fix) for being the world's best beta reader.

 **Disclaimer:** All rights belong to J. K. Rowling.

* * *

Chapter 14

Hermione waits at one of the castle windows until the Ravenclaw versus Hufflepuff game has started before she turns and makes her way up to the Gryffindor common room. She wishes Gryffindor was playing, because then she could be certain none of them would be anywhere near the dorms. On the other hand, if Gryffindor were playing, Minerva would want to taunt Snape and gloat every time the lions scored, and would notice when he slipped off to meet Hermione for their trip to Gringotts.

Hermione's own younger self is probably the only one who would prefer to be in the common room with her books than watching the game, but she watched young Hermione walk out to the pitch flanked by Harry and Ron earlier.

The common room is empty when she enters, and she slips the invisibility cloak over her before heading up to the fourth year boys' dorm room. When she opens the door, she startles at the sight of Neville Longbottom sitting at his desk with books and parchment spread about before him.

In the split second before Hermione can duck back into the corridor and close the door behind her, Neville snatches up his wand and shouts, "Stupefy!"

When Hermione falls, the invisibility cloak slips, showing her legs. Neville pulls it off, exposing the rest of her. "Professor Greene!" he gasps. "Blimey! I'm sorry. Finite Incantatem."

Hermione sits up and takes the cloak from him. "I could take House points for stunning a professor, but then I'd just have to award you the same number for the best stunner I've ever seen from you."

"I've been practicing."

"Obviously."

"You have a cloak like Harry's."

"Again, obviously."

"I don't mean to be impertinent, Professor, but what are you doing here?"

"I could tell you, but then I'd have to Obliviate you." It's the oldest wizarding joke there is, but it seems to fit the occasion, and, unfortunately, in this instance it might end up not being a joke. "What are _you_ doing here, Mr. Longbottom? Why aren't you at the match with your friends?"

"I wanted to work on my Potions essay, so I told them I wasn't feeling well."

"Ah." Hermione can relate to that. If she ever said she wanted to skip a Quidditch game and study, the boys would try to bully her into going. "Since when do you want to skip Quidditch to study Potions?"

"Since Professor Snape stopped yelling at me – well, as much anyway – and started teaching me, just like you said he would. And I want to learn. My parents had…an accident when I was younger, and Gran says maybe someone will develop a potion someday that can help them. I never thought I could actually be good enough in Potions to help with that, but now... I'm really grateful for what you said in your office, Professor. I wouldn't have even thought it was worth trying otherwise."

'Grateful enough to step outside for a few minutes and not say anything to anyone – especially Ha– Potter or Weasley – about my being here, or about the cloak?"

Neville looks uncertain.

"I promise you that I'm not doing anything that will hurt anyone."

He bites his lip.

She hesitates. "The reason I'm here is….not unrelated to what happened to your parents."

"You know about my parents?"

"I do. I'm working against the people who tortured your parents."

"How?"

"I don't like Obliviating people, Mr. Longbottom, but I will do it when necessary," she says. "I think I can trust you. I think you're an honorable person and if you give me your word, you'll keep it."

He thinks it over for a long moment, then says, "You can, and I will." He leaves the room, closing the door behind him.

Hermione casts a silencing spell and says, "Accio Marauder's Map." It flies out of the cupboard next to Harry's bed and into her hand. She sighs. She kept telling him when they were in school to keep the Map warded, and he always said, "Yeah, yeah, I am, quit nagging, Mione," but obviously he was just humoring her. _And thank goodness_ , she thinks now as she puts the Map in her bag.

Neville is waiting in the corridor when she comes out. "I'll keep my word, Professor."

"I know you will, Neville," she says, wishing she could hug him. He startles a bit at her use of his first name, then smiles shyly.

Hermione walks through the empty common room and through an empty castle and out the front door. She slips the cloak back on so she can take the shortcut past the Quidditch pitch, girding herself for Act Two of _The Black Sisters Go To Gringotts_ , starring a very nervous Hermione Granger. As she approaches the gates, Snape's black figure appears as he removes the disillusionment charm. She takes a deep breath and removes the cloak. _It's showtime._


	15. Chapter 15

Chapter 15

"So this is what it's like to be beautiful," Hermione says, looking in the mirror. Narcissa Malfoy's icy blue eyes look back at her. Pale golden tresses frame a face so symmetrical Polykleitos could have carved it.

The transition was smoother than she's experienced before with Polyjuice. Severus says it's the quality of the brew. She watches as Severus tips back the little bottle labeled L and drinks. Almost immediately, his hair and eyes began to lighten, his lanky frame to grow fuller. Gray eyes look at her above a chiseled jaw and teeth that belong in a toothpaste commercial. A silken fall of platinum hair hangs past broad shoulders.

Severus transfigures his black clothes into silvery gray and a quill into a preposterous walking stick. Hermione startles when he transfigures her dress – which she brought back from the future for this very occasion and thinks is perfectly adequate – into a dress of fine blue silk that moves over her skin with a whisper-like caress. He's right. This one is better.

He offers his arm. "Shall we, pet?"

"Pet?"

"It's what he calls her."

"I only remember him calling her my dear. Or love. Wait, no, that's what she calls him."

"So, are you ready, pet?" he smirks.

"Ready, love," she smirks back.

"Cissy doesn't smirk, my dear."

Hermione composes her face into the serene expression Narcissa so often wears. "Is this better?" she asks in a voice she hopes is sufficiently posh.

"Much," he says, and holds the door open for her. They're in private a room above the Leaky Cauldron, since they can't apparate from inside Hogwarts and can't walk through the castle looking like the Malfoys.

They go first to Ollivander's, where old Mr. Ollivander greets them fondly, recalling each of their wands by wood, core, and length as he does with everyone to whom he's ever sold a wand, like some wizard version of Rain Man.

Before Hermione can open her mouth, Severus says, "I'm afraid my wife has broken her wand and needs to replace it. We'd like to buy the twin to the one you sold her originally?" Do pureblood society wives not speak for themselves? Hermione wonders.

"Sometimes the wand that suits when a witch or wizard is young isn't the best one as she matures," Ollivander says. "Perhaps you'd like to try some others as well to see which best suits you?"

"No, thank you," Hermione says. "I'd just like to buy the twin of my wand, please."

"I really do think –"

"Mr. Ollivander, my wife and I are in a great hurry," Severus cuts in. "Please just see if you have the twin."

"Of course, Mr. Malfoy. Right away," Ollivander says and shuffles to the back of his shop.

Severus is standing extremely close to her, hovering protectively. His proximity and the numerous small touches have her nerve endings on high alert. She was so comfortable with him in her time, when he was oil on canvas, but everything is different now that he's a flesh and blood man. She wonders if he feels the chemistry between them the way she does, whether he finds her as attractive as she finds him. She isn't beautiful – well, she is today, since she's wearing Narcissa's face – but neither is he normally handsome. His features are… _compelling_. His eyes, his hands, and gods his _voice_ all attract her, but the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Being this close to him - even if she has to look past Lucius's features, since she knows that underneath it's _him_ – makes her ache to feel his magic twine with hers again.

Ollivander returns after a moment with a box that he opens for Hermione. "You're in luck, Mrs. Malfoy. I do have your wand's twin."

"Wonderful," Severus says, again annoying Hermione's inner feminist. After placing the correct number of galleons on the counter, he raises his wand and murmurs, "Obliviate."

"Poor Mr. Ollivander," Hermione says as they exit the shop.

Severus pats her arm. "Don't trouble yourself, pet. He didn't feel a thing."

"You're so in character, it's scary."

Hidden behind the face of a wizard universally acknowledged as attractive, Severus feels free to flirt a little, the way people do at a masquerade ball. "Relax and enjoy it, my dear. It isn't every day you get to be pampered and petted by a wizard of Lucius Malfoy's stature," he murmurs, his lips grazing her ear. He feels her tremble slightly with what, if he didn't know better, he would almost believe is desire.

"Lucius Malfoy is a blood purist wanker," Hermione whispers back, wanting to add that she'd much rather be pampered and petted by a wizard of Severus Snape's stature, but doesn't quite dare. Instead, she straightens her shoulders and puts on her best _I am the serene and beautiful and rich Narcissa Malfoy_ face as they walk into Gringotts.

She hands the twin of Narcissa Malfoy's wand to the goblin on duty and he verifies her identity. It isn't quite as terrifying as the first time she Polyjuiced her way into Bellatrix's vault. Maybe it's because she's done it before, maybe because playing Narcissa is easier than impersonating her lunatic sister, or maybe it's because Severus is at her side, calm and confident where Harry and Ron were as terrified as she was.

Hermione tries not to frown when the cart in which they ride to the vault is much nicer than the ones she's been in before, and the pace less terrifying. So this is how the other half lives. Even the bloody goblins, who Hermione thought hated everyone equally, treat the golden Malfoys with kid gloves.

Once the goblin leaves them alone in the vault, both of them take another sip of Polyjuice. Hermione remembers where the cup was before, and spots it easily. Aware of the duplicating and burning traps, they don't touch anything, but instead Severus levitates the cup directly into a dragonskin bag Hermione holds open. With the bag tightly closed and warded, they leave the vault, ride back up to ground level, and walk out the front door without incident.

"Cissy, Lucius, how marvelous to see you," says a woman Hermione has never seen in her life. She hopes Severus has.

"Posy, you look as lovely as always," Severus says and brushes his lips above the woman's ring-encrusted fingers.

"Posy, dear," Hermione murmurs, accepting and returning kisses that just miss cheeks.

"Lucius, you must have a talk with Severus," Posy says. "Pansy tells me that she's not allowed to partner with Draco in Potions anymore because Severus has him brewing with that horrid little Mudblood."

Ah, so Posy Parkinson, then. Hermione wonders how many different genes code for bitchiness.

"I'll have a word with him," Severus says. "Do forgive us for rushing off, but we have an appointment." Then he raises his wand, but Hermione puts her hand on his arm.

"Allow me, love."

"Certainly, pet."

"Obliviate, you bigoted bitch," she says, and before the confusion clears from Posy Parkinson's dazed expression, Severus side-alongs her into their room above the Leaky. The Horcrux is affecting both of them, but Severus recognizes the symptoms now as well.

Hermione removes a basilisk fang. "Last one. Which of us should do the honors?"

"Last? Are you sure I can't use this on Potter?"

"Prat."

"Let's both do it," he says, and puts his hand over hers around the fang.

She draws in a surprised breath as she feels his magic twining around hers the way it did during their duel. It must be the Dark Magic in the Horcrux, she thinks as gray eyes bore into blue. Even though he looks like Lucius, he _feels_ like Severus. He _smells_ like Severus, in other words, divine. He moves almost imperceptibly closer, and for a moment she sways toward him, eyes fluttering shut.

She recovers herself almost immediately, and looks down at the Hufflepuff cup on the table. As attracted to him as she is – and there's no point in lying to herself about it at this point – there is no way she wants him looking like Lucius sodding Malfoy the first time he kisses her.

His gray eyes are cold and angry when she looks back up, and she tells herself it's just the Horcrux. "Ready?" she asks.

He lets go of her hand and steps back. "You do it," he says, words so sharp they cut like a knife.

She looks at him, confused.

"Either get on with it or give it to me, Granger."

She holds the basilisk fang out to him, and he takes it carefully, without touching her. He plunges it through the cup with such force that it makes Hermione jump, and the soul fragment screams and oozes oily black smoke.

As he vanishes both Horcrux and fang, his hair and eyes darken and Lucius's too-perfect features morph into the face Hermione prefers. Her own transformation is complete as well. With a sharp flick of his wand, Severus casts a Finite and they're back in their own clothes.

"I was rather hoping to keep the dress," Hermione says.

"It didn't fit properly. Narcissa is thinner than you are."

Stung, Hermione turns away. Yes, she knows Narcissa is thinner. And more beautiful. And more _everything else_ a man wants. Apparently the only reason he looked as though he was about to kiss her a few minutes ago was because she had the form of blond, beautiful, _thin_ Narcissa. She walks out of the room and down the stairs, not looking to see if he's coming, too.


	16. Chapter 16

Chapter 16

Hermione is picking at her eggs and toast when Severus stalks into the Great Hall. Ignoring her, he takes the seat at the far end of the high table and stares balefully into his coffee cup. The students are all aflutter over the Yule Ball, which is on Friday. Hermione assumes her younger self is going with Viktor, but when you mess with timelines you never know. She glances at Snape, who has his formidable nose buried in book. Naturally, it's the one with the Horcrux potion in it. She has _got_ to tell him before he finds that footnote himself. It will take him some time to get through all the references and cross-references in four ancient languages, but he will eventually.

She's angry at herself for being so ridiculous about this. It's not as though she's asking him to be in a _relationship_ (she can hear him sneering as he says the word), just to harvest a necessary potions ingredient. It isn't a big deal. Not at all. She should just tell him, casual and unemotional, and then once they've brewed the potion and given it to Harry, she'll go back to her time and….and what?

If she's going to be honest with herself ( _Why start now?_ her inner voice snipes) she's terrified of going back to her time – far more than she was at the idea of coming back to the past. She knew what she'd find when she got to this time, but has no idea what the world – and she – will be like seven years from now.

She looks at her younger self at the Gryffindor table, buck toothed as ever since Malfoy apparently doesn't hate her enough to hex her teeth this time around. Snape has them brewing together in Potions, working on more advanced brews than the rest of the class, and in Defence they often partner when she leaves the pairings up to students. There are other inter-House pairings, too. The lions aren't all lying down with the lambs – or the snakes – but it happens often enough. Ron and Theo Nott don't always partner but they do sometimes, and the strangest one of all is Neville and the odious Parkinson, who appear to be as thick as thieves in both Defence and Potions, according to Snape. For the first time, Hermione wonders whether Parkinson's reasons for marrying Neville in her time may not have been entirely calculating.

She'll tell him tonight. They're supposed to meet to brew the base for the potion, which needs to rest for at least 24 hours before they add the final ingredient. She'll tell him tonight. She will.

He's been moody since their trip to Gringotts. She's not sure why, but knows she's not imagining it. He's sitting at the far end of the table by himself, glowering. She misses her Severus, who would joke and flirt with her. Of course, her Severus was dead, wasn't he? And a living man, flesh and blood rather than oil on canvas, was a whole other kettle of fish. Is there something wrong with her that she can have that kind of relationship with the portrait of a dead man but not with his living subject?

From the far end of the table, Severus is aware of Granger's furtive glances his way. What does the infernal woman want? He throws his napkin down on the table and strides to the door, robes billowing. He has fourth year Slytherin and Gryffindor first thing, so he can't escape bloody Granger even in class.

He watches her brewing with Malfoy. Both of them were excellent even when saddled with inferior partners but now, together, they remind him of himself and Lily. He's been giving them different assignments to brew once they finish what the rest of the class is working on.

After a prowl around the room, he opens the book with the Horcrux potion. He's worked his way through most of the obscure and often cryptic cross-references in the notes on the potion, but the translation spells don't always produce something that makes sense, so he keeps tinkering. Granger says his future self had it all figured out and they're ready to brew, but he's never been one to trust someone else's word without double checking.

He makes another pass around the room. Malfoy and Granger have finished and bottled the day's potion – perfectly, of course – and are chopping ingredients for the extra one he assigned them. Nott and Zabini, spurred to new heights of competence by competitiveness with Granger and Malfoy, have also finished so he puts the instructions for the extra potion on their desk as well. Crabbe and Goyle have produced something orange, contrasting with the varying shades of blue in most of the other cauldrons.

"Chudley Cannons fans?" he sneers.

"Sir?" Goyle frowns.

Severus sighs. "How much powdered dragon horn did you add?"

"About this much," Crabbe says, scooping some from the jar.

"What will compensate for an excess of dragon horn?" he asks the class and looks around. Granger and Malfoy both know, but keep quiet. Zabini doesn't raise his hand, but catches Snape's eye. "Mr. Zabini?"

"Gurdyroot, sir."

"Five points to Slytherin." Crabbe and Goyle just sit there. "Well, what are you waiting for? Go get the gurdyroot."

Goyle hauls himself out of his chair and lumbers toward the supply cabinet.

"Anything else that might work, if you couldn't get gurdyroot?" Severus asks, and looks around. Nott knows. He doesn't even bother looking at Granger and Malfoy. Astonishingly, Longbottom's hand is twitching, as though he wants to raise it but is too terrified. "Mr. Longbottom?" he sneers.

The boy swallows and his Adam's apple bobs. "Rose thorn?" he offers hesitantly.

"Are you asking me or telling me?"

There goes the Adam's apple again. "Telling, sir."

Severus looks at Longbottom long enough to make the boy start fidgeting, then says, "Indeed. Five points to Gryffindor."

The whole class gapes at him. Did _Snape_ just award points to Gryffindor? And not just to Gryffindor, but to _Longbottom_?

"Close your mouth, Weasley. Five points from Gryffindor for almost ruining your potion by drooling in it." _There_ , Severus smirks to himself. _Now all is right with the world again_.

Crabbe and Goyle's potion is almost back to the proper color, so he picks up the book again, and there it is, a note within a note, scribbled in crabbed writing in execrable Latin: _freshly harvested_. The note says a stasis charm won't do here, and yet bloody Granger has been here for _weeks_ letting it sit there – and for who knows how many _years_ since she let some Gryffindor twit deflower her. Can she not read? She's not a dunderhead. And his future self certainly isn't. He wouldn't have…

And then it hits him. He _didn't_. _She_ didn't. She said she brought it, but she never said it had been harvested. Now it all makes sense, the way she avoided the subject, put him off, intent on dealing with all the other Horcruxes first. Noble little Gryffindor, determined to sacrifice herself to save the world, but wanting to put off the odious deed at long as possible. Well, she can put it off forever. There are other virgins in the world.

Crabbe and Goyle's potion is pink where it should be gray. How could they bollocks it up again so quickly? He vanishes it. "Mr. Crabbe, go to the Defense classroom and tell Professor Greene I need to see her at once." He glowers at young Granger because her older self isn't to hand. She looks at him, confused, then returns her eyes to her cauldron.

Crabbe comes back.

"Where. Is. Professor. Greene?"

"She said she's teaching but she has a free period before lunch and will come then, sir."

He vanishes every potion in every cauldron. Shocked faces share back at him, including Granger's.

"Twenty points from Gryffindor, Miss Granger." _What for?_ her hurt eyes ask. "For disrespect," he snaps and stalks to the door, book in his hand. "Class dismissed," he says as he sweeps from the room.

"Class dismissed," he says again, bursting into the Defence classroom.

"Class is _not_ dismissed," Hermione tells her students.

"Oh, yes it is, Professor Greene. Out," he says to the students, his voice low and menacing. _Now_."

The students look nervously between them. Hermione looks at the book in his hand. _Oh._ "Class dismissed," she says. "Two feet on the Patronus charm by next class."

"It has to be harvested fresh," he says when they're alone in the classroom. "A stasis charm won't work."

"I know. I should have told you before. I wanted to, but –"

"But you wanted to put off the horrible deed as long as possible. So noble, sacrificing yourself for Harry Potter. Offering up your maidenhead for the Greater Good."

"No."

"No? Then why did you keep putting me off whenever I asked about the potion?"

"Because I was embarrassed. You hated me. Your portrait didn't, but that was after he'd gotten to know me. I thought if we had some time, maybe you'd grow not to hate me, too."

"Lies."

"What would convince you?"

His fingers twitch on his wand.

"No," she says. "I don't give consent."

"I need to know."

"Not like that." Her voice is emphatic, but she doesn't close her eyes and look away, holds his gaze.

"Legilimens," he snarls.


	17. Chapter 17

Chapter 17

"Legilimens," he snarls, and then he's in her mind, sees her talking with his portrait, snatches of conversation, one leading to the next.

 _Because you're going to go back in time and shag the bat of the dungeons?... What are you going to do, give me detention?... I learned a new trick…. plotting my deflowering….what a Dark Lady you'd make… you might leave me in peace…or I might not…_

The way she looked at his portrait, blushing, the way a woman looks when she wants a man. He watches more of her and his portrait, but now Draco is there, too, and he sees the way his godson looks at her, and then she and Draco are by the lake.

 _So. You and Severus_ … _It can't be helped, Malfoy_ … _I want to still be in love with you…_ And then she's in Draco's arms, kissing him, a voice in her head whispering that there is _more_ ….

That whisper of _more_ takes him to another time when Granger is with Severus, alive, not his portrait. They're dueling. She's younger, maybe seventeen, in a school uniform. They're in the Defence classroom and the Gryffindor and Slytherin students watch them duel. He's goading her, trying to get her to do something. He feels her resistance to – gods, he's trying to get her to cast an Unforgivable! _What the fuck_?

She's getting angrier and angrier – but it's more than anger. She's aroused. He can feel the way his magic coils around hers, seducing, beckoning, and hers answering in kind. Her anger and her desire feed each other. He can feel the Dark Magic building in her, the way it did during her demonstration duel, but more intense, so much more.

 _I could Imperius you_ , his voice rumbles in her ear, and the feel of his breath against her neck makes her memory self shudder with want. _You could rot in Azkaban, too_ , she says. _I could Obliviate you_ , he says. _You could try_. When he murmurs, _I could use Legilimency_ , he feels her panic, her abject terror at the idea of having her mind invaded. Memory Severus knows he's found her weak spot and raises his wand, but before he can finish the incantation, Memory Granger screams, _Crucio!_ And then she's confused, because her wand is gone and he's not writhing on the floor like she wants him to.

Severus pulls out of her mind, stunned. Her eyes are filling with tears, and she's looking at him with so much hurt and betrayal that he feels physically struck by it.

"Granger," he says, his voice coming out in a strangled cry that doesn't sound at all like him. "Hermione –"

She blinks away the tears and the blue eyes that aren't Granger's go cold, dead. "I don't believe I gave you permission to use my given name." Her tone is clipped, mocking, as she throws his own words back at him.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done that."

"No, you shouldn't have." Her voice is steady even though tears trickle down her cheeks. She seems unaware of them, doesn't bother to wipe them away.

"You could have closed your eyes, the way you did before." He wants to pull her into his arms, wipe away her tears, but doesn't dare.

"I wanted to see if I could trust you," she says. "Now I know I can't."

"But you do." His tone is almost pleading. He hates himself for it, but not as much as he hates himself for invading her mind. "I saw –"

"I _did_. Not anymore. Now get out."

"Granger –"

"Get. Out."

He does. And as the door closes behind him, he realizes he's done it again. She looked at him just the way Lily did that day at the lake, and things were never right between them again.

How could he fuck this up so badly? How could he have known that Granger was so terrified of Legilimency that she was actually willing to use an Unforgivable to prevent it? Rape of the mind, she called it the day she arrived. And there had been no _need_ for him to do it. She trusted him – past tense – and he could have just fucking _asked_ her.

Students scurry out of his way as he stalks through the halls toward the dungeons with more vehemence than usual. His face is a mask of fury that they would be surprised to know is directed entirely at himself.

The ridiculous irony, of course, is that he didn't see what he expected to, what he was so certain he would. She hadn't been putting him off about the Horcrux potion all this time because the idea of harvesting the missing ingredient was abhorrent. She wasn't avoiding the topic because she didn't want him, but because she _did_.

Needing to be sure, he pulls out memories, one after the other, and watches them in the Pensieve. She was embarrassed, and it really did seem like it was because she was attracted to him. _Severus, you stupid bastard_.

He apologized. She might forgive him. She said Lily should have forgiven him, that she had forgiven Weasley and Malfoy worse. _Malfoy_. Malfoy, whom she kissed by the lake, her hands tangling in his platinum hair, her body pressed against his. _Her_ Malfoy.

It means nothing that she felt attracted to him during that duel, Severus realizes. It was all Dark Magic and hormones, nothing more. She's curious, wants a fling with the dark, dangerous Death Eater before she goes back to the future and _her_ Malfoy. That's all. He'll give her that, if she asks – maybe – but he won't go running after her apologizing again. She's not Lily. She dared to mock his feelings for Lily. She's not worth one hair off Lily's head, and he's damn well not going to sit crying outside her door begging her forgiveness.


	18. Chapter 18

Chapter 18

Hermione has a headache. Severus – the portrait who behaved like a decent person, not the man who lacks even a shred of human decency – told her she might get headaches if she stayed in the past too long. She asked Snape – arsehole human Snape – to work on improving the potion so she could stay longer, but of course he didn't. He wants her gone, and isn't going to lift a finger to do anything that might keep her here any longer than necessary.

It's time to take her next dose of Time Turner potion. Maybe that will help with the headache. She doesn't want to take a headache potion because Severus wasn't sure how any other potion might interact with the Time Turner potion. She rummages in her bag for the bottle, but can't find it. "Accio Time Turner potion," she says, but nothing happens. She frowns. She knows there was one in here. There's another in her bedside table drawer, so she gets up from her desk and walks into her private quarters to get it. Only it's not there. Her frown deepens. What are the odds _both_ bottles would be gone?

She tries summoning the bottles, but nothing happens. She walks down to the dungeons and stands in the hallway outside Snape's rooms and tries again, in case proximity helps. Still nothing. _Snape, you dirty, buggering bastard_. He obviously summoned them, and now he's warded them so she can't summon them back. But why? It could only mean that he wants to talk to her. And of course he can't just come tell her that like an adult with normal social skills, can he?

She snatches up a piece of parchment scrawls, _Give it back_ and heads up to the owlery.

No response, naturally. She tries to concentrate on her marking, but her headache is getting worse. She picks up her wand, conjures her Patronus and hisses, "Give. It. Back."

Severus is waiting for his students to arrive when her Patronus comes. He ignores it, as he ignored her owl. If she wants her sodding potion, she can come and ask him for it. Naturally it's the fourth year class he's waiting for, the class where fifteen-year-old Granger will look at him with those big, innocent brown eyes, having no idea that she's going to grow up and turn his life inside out.

"Mr. Malfoy," he says, beckoning, when Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle come in.

"Sir?"

"You may partner with Miss Parkinson – or whomever you like – today."

"Why, sir?"

"Because I said so, Mr. Malfoy," he says in a voice he doesn't normally use with his godson.

"I'd just as soon keep working with Granger, if it's all right, sir."

"As you prefer."

 _Ungrateful brat_. He whinged about having to work with Granger in the first place, and now he doesn't appreciate being told he doesn't have to.

Severus notices Pansy Parkinson glaring at Draco, and then casting an even darker look at Granger when she sashays in with Weasley and Potter. As Granger passes by on her way to sit with Draco, Parkinson fires a poorly concealed hex at Granger, who shrieks as her front teeth start growing down past her lower lip, headed for her chin.

Severus casts a quick Finite and says, "Mr. Longbottom, take Miss Granger to the infirmary. Miss Parkinson, twenty points from Slytherin." The students gape at him. "As much for being clumsy enough to get caught as for the hex, which is easily undone," he says, but the damage is done. He'd better _hope_ the Dark Lord doesn't come back, because if he gets a reputation for fairness to Gryffindors in general and Potter's sidekick in particular, he is so very, very fucked.

Severus is walking around checking the messes in his students' cauldrons when the door flies open and bangs against the wall with a resounding crash as Granger charges in. Not a dentally incapacitated teenage Granger, but an adult Granger radiating as much fury as the avenging goddess Nemesis.

"Class dismissed," she announces.

"Class is _not_ dismissed," Severus replies coolly, then charges toward her looking anything but cool after she vanishes every potion in every cauldron.

"Out!" she growls at the students then casts a non-verbal Muffliato around her and Severus, not waiting for the students to leave before she rips into him.

"Are you a _child_? Can you not simply _tell_ me you want to talk to me?"

 _Tell her you're sorry. Tell her you couldn't face sitting outside yet another angry woman's door begging for forgiveness,_ he tells himself. Instead he says, "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"You do know that I'll _die_ if I don't take that potion?"

"Always with the drama," he says with an exaggerated sigh. A rather theatrical sigh, truth be told, he realizes with annoyance.

"Either I take that potion or I go back to my time without destroying the last Horcrux."

"I'm perfectly capable of destroying the Horcrux on my own."

"By taking a basilisk fang to Harry? No, thanks."

"You're hardly the only virgin in Britain," he says, then adds, "perhaps just the oldest."

That one hit home, he sees with less satisfaction than anticipated. She struggles to compose herself, then says, "The base needs to rest for at least 24 hours. Brew it and I'll bring you the ingredient. As soon as Harry takes it, I'll be gone."

"Going to a bar to pick up some Muggle to fuck?"

She gives him a cruel smile. "Oh, I'm sure Sirius Black would be glad to help."

Severus feels her words twist like a knife in his gut, and before he recovers sufficiently to formulate a cutting response about dogs and fleas, she's already slammed the door behind her.

It is _not_ his concern what she does. He is _not_ responsible for what happens to her if she doesn't take that potion. She can go back to her time and let him sort out the Horcrux. And he can, quite easily. There must be plenty of virgins who are of age, unattractive ones he'd have a shot at seducing, since Imperius is out of the question. Or he could ask Lucius, tell him it's for some Dark potion or other, nothing to do with the Dark Lord. Lucius wouldn't even _have_ to Imperius a girl, since women – even very young ones – seem to like him. Even Granger, who hates Lucius, seemed like she was attracted to Severus when he was Polyjuiced as Lucius. Until she remembered it was _him_ underneath the flawless features and gleaming teeth, of course.

He broods until lunchtime, when he sits at the end of the high table and broods at his steak pie. Granger isn't there. Not that he gives a tinker's damn.

After lunch he has a double free period that's long enough to for him to brew the Horcrux potion base. He works even more carefully and meticulously than usual, concentrating on the process, not on the source of the final ingredient. This potion, if it's brewed right and works as the book says it does, will free him from the Dark Lord – and from Albus. _If_ it works. His future self thought it would, but he doesn't want to get his hopes up. If it doesn't work, he really can't take a basilisk fang to Lily's son, can he?

Utilitarian debates about the good of the many versus the good of the one he can shut out easily, but thoughts about Granger going to see Black tomorrow – he hopes she's bluffing but she may be just that stubborn – require his Occlumency shields to shut out.

When the base is finished, he sets a timer to tell him when the 24 hours are up and cleans his lab thoroughly. He returns to the classroom with about ten minutes before the Slytherin and Gryffindor sixth year class begins.

"Right in the middle of class," one of the Weasley twins says as he walks in. "She just stops talking mid-sentence, and kind of sways, then falls over in a dead faint."

"Is she going to be okay?" Angelina Johnson asks.

"We called Pomfrey –"

" _I_ cast the Patronus," Lee Jordan cuts in. "Good thing she finally taught us how after that wanker Crouch wasted the first part of the year."

Severus snaps to attention at this. "Who collapsed?" he demands.

"Professor Greene."

"Where is she?"

"The infirmary."

Severus flicks his wand at the board and _Three feet on the uses of dragon's blood in healing potions_ appears. "Leave your essays on my desk," he calls as he all but runs to the door.

Poppy is casting a diagnostic charm over an unconscious Granger when Severus reaches the infirmary. He uncorks the bottle he's pulled from his pocket and puts his arm behind Granger's shoulders, pulling her to a sitting position.

"Severus Snape, what do you think you're doing?" Poppy demands.

Ignoring her, he tips the bottle to Granger's lips and whispers, "Drink."

Her lashes flutter a little and she moans something sibilant that he thinks may be his name.

"Please, pet," he murmurs. "Just a little."

She swallows a little, then a little more. She opens her eyes and takes the bottle from him, swallows the rest of the dose and sets it on the bedside table.

"Stupid, stubborn girl." The words sound more like an endearment than a rebuke. "Is it really worth dying just to show me up?"

"What did you give her, Severus?" Poppy asks.

"It's for a condition I have," Hermione says, rapidly coming back to herself. "I ran out of it and Professor Snape was kind enough to brew some more for me."

"What condition?"

"It's kind of personal," Hermione says.

"I _am_ a medical professional, you know," Poppy huffs, casting another diagnostic spell. She frowns. "That's odd."

"What?"

"Your readings are almost back to normal."

"Can I go then?"

"I'd like you to stay a bit longer so I can observe you," the Mediwitch says.

"All right."

"Rest," the Mediwitch says. "And _you_ need to go now," she tells Severus.

"Five minutes, Poppy," he says. "I need to speak with Professor Greene."

"Two minutes, and I'll be back to check."

"Harridan," Severus mutters and looks at Granger, but she's turned to lie on her side facing away from him. He walks around to the other side of the bed. Removing another full bottle of the potion from his pocket, he sets it down next to the half finished bottle and casts a Muffliato. "I'll brew more tonight."

"Don't bother. I'll be gone in a few days. Have you brewed the base?"

"Granger –"

"Have you?"

"Yes."

"Then we're nearly finished. Soon you'll only have to put up with one of me being insufferable." She turns on her other side, facing away from him again.

He tries to think of something he can say to make things right, but sees the Medi-harridan charging down the row of beds at him and ends the silencing spell. He's halfway to the door when he notices young Granger sitting in one of the beds watching him. "Are you quite recovered, Miss Granger?" he asks her.

She looks startled at his politeness, considering what a bastard he's been to her since he's been in a strop with her older self, but she recovers and replies, "Yes, thank you, Professor."

"Teeth good as new?"

"Better than new," she says, showing teeth that look like adult Granger's.

"You'll have to owl Parkinson a thank you note," he says, leaving both Grangers behind as he heads back to see what the unsupervised Weasley twins have gotten up to in his classroom.


	19. Chapter 19

Chapter 19

After four hours and countless diagnostics, Hermione is finally allowed to leave the infirmary. Back in her quarters, she runs a bath and sinks gratefully into the scented water. She has no idea what to do.

Snape said he brewed the base, so that means tomorrow she needs to provide the virgin's blood. Which means either a Muggle in a bar ( _ugh_ ) or Sirius ( _double ugh_ ) or asking someone else ( _Remus? Bill Weasley?_ ). Or she can just owl Snape that she's going back to her time and trust that he'll finish the potion and destroy the Horcrux himself ( _coward_ ).

The one option she resolutely refuses to entertain is the one she came back in time planning on. That one is off the table because he very obviously detests her. _Then why did he call me pet in the infirmary? Why did he seem so worried about me?_

She wishes she had access to a Pensieve (of course _he_ has one) so she could watch the memory and see it more objectively. Both memories, the infirmary and when he said he was sorry just after withdrawing from her mind. He apologized and she reacted with anger. Entirely justifiable anger. He'd just invaded her mind without her consent. And it wasn't just that she hadn't given her consent. She had said, in so many words, _I do not give consent_. And he did it anyway. _Why_?

He said why, at the time. She wishes she could remember his exact words. Something about sacrificing herself and how she wanted to put off the horrid deed as long as possible. Did he think she found the idea of being with him _horrid_? That _she_ found the idea horrid? _He_ was the one who did, obviously. The only time he'd ever acted like he was attracted to her was when she looked like Narcissa Malfoy. Touching her, whispering endearments, almost kissing her.

And then it hits her – _she_ was the one who pulled away from that kiss, and afterward, he was cold and angry and things haven't been right between them since. He had no idea the only reason she pulled away was because he looked like Lucius Malfoy. He must have thought she did it just because she didn't want _him_ , Severus, not Severus-as-Lucius.

A conversation with his portrait comes back to her, when he kept saying…oh, gods. She knew he was insecure. She knew it before she ever came back here, but once she got here and he started acting the way he acts, she forgot about it because she was too busy being insecure herself.

 _I'll probably be a right bastard_ , his portrait told her, _but try to be my friend anyway_. She did try, but not hard enough. He only turned cruel in the face of her anger. It's how he handles being hurt. She told him Lily should have forgiven him, and then _she_ refused to forgive him when he apologized.

She gets out of the bath, dries off, and gets dressed. She walks down to the dungeons and knocks on his door. When he doesn't answer, she starts to turn and leave, then stops and knocks again. This time he opens the door.

"What do you want?" he asks, a slight slur in his voice. His shirt has several buttons undone and he's not wearing his frock coat. He's been drinking. A lot.

"I'm sorry," she says.

"You're _sorry_?"

"Can I come in?"

" _You're_ sorry?"

"Can I please come inside? There could be students about and you're quite obviously drunk."

He holds the door open for her with an exaggerated courtly bow whose effect is somewhat diminished when he stumbles as he follows her inside.

"What are you sorry for?"

"For not forgiving you," she says. "You said you were sorry and I wouldn't forgive you."

"I didn't deserve to be forgiven."

"Deserve it or not, I do."

"I invaded your mind."

"Severus, what part of _I forgive you_ do you not understand?"

"The whole thing, really. No one's ever forgiven me for anything." Then he frowns as though trying very hard to remember something. "You called me Severus."

"Is that all right?"

"Yes. Does that mean I get to call you Hermione?"

"I wish you would."

"Hermione. Her-my-oh-neeee," he says, dragging out the syllables. "Such a pretty name."

"Oh dear. You really _are_ drunk, aren't you?"

"I really am, Hermione."

"Do you have any sober-up potion?"

He nods.

"Go take it and I'll make some tea."

"Okay, Hermione."

She bites back the urge to say, _There's a good lad_ , and goes in search of the kettle. When she carries the tray into the sitting room, he's sober and embarrassed.

"Granger –"

"You were going to call me Hermione, don't you remember?"

"I wish neither of us remembered any of that."

"If you Obliviate me, you're just going to have to apologize again, Severus."

He smiles. Not a smirk, but an honest to goodness, genuine smile. Then the smile fades and he asks, seriously, "Why do you forgive me?"

"Because that's what friends do."

"Is that what we are? Friends?"

"Is that what you want to be?" she asks, and sees the walls go up. _He's not angry. He's insecure_. "Do you know why I pulled away when you almost kissed me at the Leaky Cauldron?"

"I can well imagine." The supercilious Professor Snape voice is back.

"And your imaginings would be all wrong. It was because you looked like Lucius Malfoy. I didn't want our first kiss to be when you looked like that bloody wanker. I wanted _you_ to kiss me."

"Granger, I don't blame you for not wanting to besmirch yourself with Black or some Muggle stranger. I'm at least someone you know, and I'm willing to help you obtain what we need to finish the potion, if that's why you're here, but you don't need to tell me it's something more."

 _Gryffindor courage, Hermione_. She gets up from the sofa and walks to the armchair where he's sitting. "I thought I told you to call me Hermione," she says, and sits on his lap. "Or pet," she adds, nuzzling at his neck.

"Pet?"

She pulls back and looks at him. "You called me that in the infirmary."

"I did?"

"Want to see the memory?"

He looks at her, searching, assessing. "Take out the contact lenses."

She vanishes them to their case and he continues looking at her until she demands, "Aren't you _ever_ going to kiss me?"

He smiles. "Gods, but you're bossy."

"You like me bossy."

"I like you, full stop," he says, sliding his hand into her hair and pulling her closer until their lips brush. The sound she makes, somewhere between a sigh and a moan, encourages him, and the second kiss is an exploration, lips parting, tongues tasting, hands pulling one another closer until they feel the tendrils of one another's magic curling around them. The third is a conflagration, the _more_ she wanted when Malfoy kissed her, only now there is no thought of Malfoy or anyone or anything except _this_ man and his mouth, his hands, his _magic_ , blotting out every coherent thought, consuming her like a fire that sets every nerve ending in her body ablaze.

Some time later, they look at each other, foreheads touching, both breathing a bit faster.

"That was…" she begins, but words to describe it adequately elude her.

"It was," he agrees. He picks up his wand and casts a charm that makes numbers hover in the air before them: 16:03.

"What's that?"

"How much longer the Horcrux potion needs to rest before we can add the final ingredient."

"Sixteen hours," she groans. "Really?"

"And three minutes."

"Probably two and a half minutes now."

"Maybe two and a quarter," he says, and kisses her. Some time later, he casts the charm again. It shows 15:47.

"Should I leave?" she asks.

"I don't want you to, but it may be best." Seeing her crestfallen expression, he chuckles and pulls her against his chest. She can feel the sound through his chest, and burrows closer. "Or we could fool around a little longer?" he suggests.

"Maybe you could show me that trick you learned in October?"

"If I do that,' he says silkily, "I assure you that potion will be ruined and I'll have to take a basilisk fang to Potter." When she swats at his arm, he adds, "Or ask Lucius to ravish a virgin for me."

"You wouldn't ravish one yourself?"

"You're the only one I'm going to be ravishing, pet," he murmurs against her neck, and eventually it appears as though they might be in danger of ruining the potion even without any new tricks.

Regretfully, she picks her bra up off the floor and says, "I suppose I should go now."

"I suppose you should," he agrees around of mouthful of what she's trying to cover up.

"So we're well rested for tomorrow. We do have a potion to brew, you know."

"Do we?" Her neck is still accessible, and he makes do. "I'd quite forgotten."

"Dark Lord, Horcruxes, et cetera?"

"Needs must, I suppose," he sighs.

"See you at breakfast, then?"

"I may take Dreamless Sleep and try to spend as much of the next," he casts the timer charm, "fourteen hours and fifty-two minutes as possible unconscious."


	20. Chapter 20

Chapter 20

When Albus cancelled classes on the Friday of the Yule Ball Severus was annoyed because how was he supposed to keep up his record of Potions OWL and NEWT scores that beat out every other subject if that old fool kept interfering with his teaching time? Now that he's lazing in bed with only a few hours left on the potion timer, he couldn't care less whether Minerva beats his scores. Hell, even Sybill can beat his scores for all he cares this morning.

He takes a shower and shaves – meticulously – and dresses in shirt and trousers, dispensing with all the layers and buttons that will only slow them down. Sitting down to breakfast ordered from the elves, he's half tempted to watch the memory of last night in the Pensieve just to reassure himself that he didn't imagine the whole thing.

When she arrives, he blurts out, "Are you sure?" then cringes. _Smooth, Severus. Very smooth._

"You know I am, you great git. You were inside my head," she laughs.

And he does know. He just can't believe it, even having seen. And the reminder of how he'd invaded her mind without consent only feeds his doubts. "I had no business being there," he says stiffly.

"I've already forgiven you, remember? Now kiss me already."

"So bossy," he says, and does. "What am I going to do with you?"

"Anything you want," she says, and the _way_ she says it dispels every shred of doubt. He leads her into the bedroom and proceeds to do just that.

From the sounds she's making – _who knew swotty, bossy Granger would be this responsive?_ – what he wants is just what she likes. Being a bit swotty himself, he makes a thorough study of her responses and adjusts his actions accordingly.

He's always thought sex rather like brewing, where theoretical knowledge is important, but careful attention and intuition make the difference between an acceptable potion and one that is sublime. A master brewer observes the cauldron closely and divines exactly what to add when for maximum effectiveness. At her _yesssss_ he adds a more of this, and at her _oh, please_ a bit more of that. When words give way to incoherent moans and gasps, he knows she's like a nearly perfect brew that requires only one more anti-clockwise stir to bring it to perfection.

He stirs, she screams, and he stops paying attention to anything at all.

"Glad I waited until November," she says when she's capable of speech.

"What are you on about?"

"Your portrait said you learned a new trick in October." She lowers her voice an octave and says in an annoying good impression of him, "Or, rather, I perfected one that I knew about in theory but hadn't quite mastered in practice."

He frowns, thinking, and then realizes. "Oh. That. I have yet to show you that."

"I thought…"

"You thought what?"

"That, you know…" She gestures vaguely. " _That_."

"You scream and claw like a wildcat but you're embarrassed to say the words?"

"Be nice."

"Miss Granger, I am never _nice_. You knew that long before you came back in time intent on seducing me." He narrows his eyes. "And if you are implying that I didn't know how to do… _that_ until I was in my thirties, you insult me."

"Child prodigy, were you?"

"When I was newly Marked at eighteen, the wife of one of the older Death Eaters took me under her wing, so to speak. Fed up with her husband's blatant infidelities and his sexual incompetence, she wanted someone young who hadn't learned bad habits she'd have to break."

"Here's to you, Mrs. Robinson."

"Madam Dolohov, actually."

"Thank you for cuckholding the bastard who gave me this," she says, touching the scar on her chest.

"I could kill him for you, if you like."

"That's all right. Fucking his wife is sufficient."

"Just as well, since he's in Azkaban and I might have trouble making good on my offer."

"Wait. You called her Madam Dolohov?"

"She was a lady of nearly my mother's age. I didn't want to overstep."

"You were worried about _overstepping_ with your face between her legs?"

He silences her laughter by kissing her.

"Did he ever find out?"

"Unfortunately. During one of their numerous altercations she showed him a memory of us in a Pensieve, with running commentary about how my performance compared to his."

"What did he do?"

"He had to wait till the next time I displeased the Dark Lord, but when I did, he Crucioed me within an inch of my life, said he'd make me scream louder than his wife had."

"Did you?"

"I screamed, but not as loud – or as long – as Madam Dolohov."

"Men. Everything's a pissing match, isn't it?" she says, rolling her eyes. "So she was your first?"

"Yes. There was a Muggle girl back home who got drunk enough to find the idea appealing, but she passed out during the preliminaries so that was that. Just as well. I doubt she'd have been able to teach me much of value even had she remained conscious."

"So, what was so esoteric that you didn't learn it until the ripe old age of 35?"

He summons a book from the bookcase in the sitting room. _The Ancient Arte of Sex Magick_. He opens it to a page near the beginning and hands it to her. Her eyes widen as she scans the page.

"Something you might like to try?"

"Yes, please," she says, and starts looking through the book. She frowns at something about midway through, turns the book sideways and squints at an illustration. "Is that even possible?"

He looks. "Not for Muggles, certainly. Theoretically it is, but I can't say from experience. I actually haven't tried most of what's in there."

"Could we? That one?" she says, pointing.

"It's a bit advanced. We should probably keep to the early chapters for now. Less than an hour ago you were a maiden untouched, after all."

"I've always been advanced in my studies."

He laughs. "That you have."

"Though actually," she says, "I think I could do with a review of some of the material we've already covered."

"Any particular part of the curriculum in which you'd like to concentrate?"

"Erm…"

"Use your words, Hermione."

She blushes.

"Oh," he says. " _That_."


	21. Chapter 21

Chapter 21

The finished potion is as deep a crimson as the blood they added. It sits on Hermione's desk as she waits for Harry, dressed for the Yule Ball that starts in less than an hour.

"You wanted to see me, Professor?" he says, appearing in her office doorway in dress robes.

"Thank you for coming, Mr. Potter" It's so disconcerting calling him of all people by anything but his first name. "I have something that might help with your headaches."

"You know about those?"

"I do, and I know why you have them."

"It's to do with my scar."

"Yes."

"With…Voldemort."

"Yes." She hands him the potion. "This will stop them."

"How often would I have to take it?"

"Just this once."

He examines the bottle, then looks up at her. "Did you brew it?"

"Yes," she says, wishing Harry could know that Severus had helped him, but Severus thought it would make Harry less likely to take it without questioning her further, or worse, saying he wanted to ask Dumbledore about it.

He hesitates a moment, but swallows it and Hermione watches as his scar fades to the faint silvery white of an old injury. She conjures a mirror and hands it to him. A look of wonder crosses his face as he stares at himself. "I can feel it," he says. "Or, rather, I _can't_ feel it."

"It was hurting before you took the potion?"

"No. I wasn't even aware of it. But now that it's gone – whatever _it_ is – I feel different."

"Better?"

"Yes. Absolutely better," he says. "How did you know how?"

"I study the Dark Arts, remember?"

"Right," he says, standing up. "Well, thank you, Professor."

"You're welcome, Mr. Potter."

After he leaves, she opens the door from her office to her sitting room. Severus is waiting for her, the same look of wonder on his face that Harry had worn as he looks at his left arm. He's rolled up the sleeve to show what's left of the Dark Mark, a pale gray shadow of what it was just a few minutes before.

"He said he could feel it, once it was gone," she says, "that he felt different. Do you?"

"Yes."

"We did it, Severus. We really did it."

"We did," he says. "I'm free. I never thought I would be, you know."

"I know."

"Come here," he says, holding his arms out to her, and wrapping them around her when she does. "You've set me free, Hermione."

"What will you do, now that you're free?"

"I have no idea," he says. "I never dared to make plans."

"Never dared to hope?"

"No," he says. "What about you? When you go back?"

"How can I make plans when I have no idea what that world will be like?" She tightens her hold on him. "I don't want to go back."

"You don't have to tonight. Tonight you have to chaperone a castle full of hormonal teenagers and keep any little witches and wizards from being conceived in the rose garden." He offers her his arm and says in his silkiest Lucius voice, "Shall we, pet?"

"Let's do, love," she replies in her most posh Narcissa tones.

* * *

Hermione is surprised to find Lucius and Narcissa themselves are in the Great Hall when they arrive. She forgot that as a member of the Board of Governors he was likely to be there.

"So you're the famous Professor Greene," Lucius says after Severus introduces them.

"Famous?"

"My son never stops talking about you. Well, he occasionally stops long enough to talk about that Granger girl."

Not sure which statement is more surprising, Hermione says only, "He's an excellent student. I enjoy having him in my class."

"I'm delighted to hear it, Professor. Now if you ladies will excuse us for a bit, I need to speak to Severus."

Severus walks with Lucius out of the Great Hall and down an empty corridor. He casts Muffliato and looks at Lucius.

"The Mark," Lucius says. "It's all but gone."

"Mine as well."

"Do you know why?"

Severus hesitates. The Dark Lord is gone. There's no reason to pretend to support him any longer. "Yes."

"Is he gone? Truly gone?"

"Yes."

"And you had something to do with it?"

"Yes."

"How?"

"I could tell you," he says, and Lucius joins in to finish in unison, "but then I'd have to Obliviate you."

"I'm glad, actually," Lucius says after a long silence. When Severus only raises a brow and waits, he continues, "Do you have any idea how much money I was spending when Tom Riddle was alive? The man never earned a galleon in his life, and he had more expensive tastes than Narcissa – and that's saying something."

"So you'll start looking for a Dark Lord with better return on investment next time round?"

"I don't think I'll look for one at all."

"What about purifying the wizarding race of all that dirty blood?"

"Draco would have me believe that _blood_ has nothing to do with magic, that it's all about genes and DNA and a lot of other things he's eyeball-deep in reading thanks to a book that Professor Greene gave him. Once he finished it, he got that Granger girl to help him track down more, for which I had to change galleons into pounds so her parents could order them _on the line_ , whatever that means, and owl them to her for Draco. Now he's after me to hire a Muggle genetics professor from some university to tutor him this summer."

"At the Manor? You'd have to Obliviate the poor fellow after every session."

"The plan is for him and Granger to meet the tutor at the university library."

"And you're all right with that?"

"Some of what Draco's been reading is actually quite fascinating. Do you know there's a field called evolutionary biology where they have research that shows monogamy isn't natural for males? I showed it to Cissy but she's having none of it, of course."

"I meant his friendship with a Muggleborn witch."

"Oh, that. I think it's a bit more than friendship. Do you know he actually wanted to ask her to the ball? He would have if some other bloke hadn't got in first. He was quite put out. But he's planning on inviting her to our New Years Eve ball." Seeing the dark look Severus gets at this, Lucius says, "You disapprove? I always suspected you were only going along with that blood purity business for appearance's sake."

"I was."

"It was preposterous, really, when you think about it. Riddle was a _halfblood_ , for fuck's sake. No offense," he adds, realizing to whom he's talking.

"None taken."

"Cissy will be delighted about being able to renovate that wing we've been keeping for him just in case all these years."

"I should think you'd have enough space even without that wing."

"Yes, but it has the best views in the Manor. Entitled berk, always had to have the best of everything that didn't belong to him. Anyway, we'd best get back before Cissy starts wondering if I'm following the dictates of evolution and chasing after seventh years."

* * *

"You're quite a good dancer," Hermione says.

"You say that as though you're surprised," Severus replies.

"It was hard to picture."

"All of us in my House were taught. It wouldn't do for any of us to make fools of ourselves publicly." He glances at Ron and one of the Patil twins dancing nearby. "If Weasley were in Slytherin, Miss Patil's toes wouldn't be suffering such absuse."

"That was never going to happen. Fred and George perhaps, but never Ron."

"Agreed. Though perhaps part of his problem is that he isn't paying attention to his own date."

Ron is glaring daggers at young Hermione and Viktor Krum, to the mounting annoyance of the girl on whose toes he's stepping.

"He isn't the only one distracted by your younger self's Cinderella at the ball transformation either," Severus remarks, glancing at Draco.

Hermione follows his gaze. Even though Malfoy is dancing competently and leaving her toes in peace, Parkinson is clearly unhappy about where his eyes keep straying. Having had enough, she pushes him away and stalks off the dance floor, grabs Neville and pulls him back with her, giving Malfoy a triumphant glare as Neville sweeps her away.

"Neville's quite a good dancer, too, isn't he?" Hermione says.

"His grandmother wouldn't have permitted him not to be."

"You know they were married in my time?"

"Longbottom and Parkinson? Really?"

"He did look quite dashing killing that snake."

" _Longbottom_ and _dashing_ are two words I never thought to hear syntactically linked."

"You're adorable when you're excessively formal."

He glowers.

"And when you glower like that. But especially when you're drunk." She giggles. "Her-my-oh-neeeeee."

"You will pay for your impertinence."

"Is that a threat or a promise?"

"Both," he says, and the look in his eyes accompanied by the tone of his voice makes her go slightly weak in the knees.

The song ends and they walk off the dance floor, passing Draco as he approaches Viktor, taps him on the shoulder and asks, "May I?"

Viktor acquiesces graciously, but young Hermione is clearly stunned as Draco takes her in his arms for the next dance.

"Do _not_ ," Hermione says, glancing around and casting a Muffliato, "under any circumstances let my younger self marry Malfoy," Hermione tells Severus.

"Wasn't it Weasley you hoped to make jealous by appearing on the arm of an international Quidditch star?"

"Don't let her marry Ron either."

"How about Krum?"

"Oh, there was never any danger of that."

"Good. He's a bit old for you."

She laughs. "Look who's talking."

"You're in your twenties now. You were fifteen then." He glares at Viktor. "Did Mr. Krum behave himself when you were in fourth year?"

"Would I have been a virgin so long past my expiration date if he hadn't?"

"Yet another unkind comment for which I suppose you expect me to apologize."

"Only if I have to apologize for throwing Sirius in your face."

"That _was_ unkind."

"It was," she agrees. "But you deserved it."

"Debatable," he says. "However, I will endeavor to be…less unkind in future."

"Really?"

"Only to you. I make no promises about my unpleasantness in general."

* * *

Later, after a review of the Muggle curriculum and a foray into the first chapter one of _The Ancient Arte_ , Severus is idly tracing patterns on the smooth skin of Hermione's left hip. "Apparently you'll be spending New Years with the Malfoys," he says.

"What did I tell you about pronouns?" She runs her fingers through the hair at the back of his neck. "And I was serious earlier. Do _not_ let my younger self marry Malfoy."

"Or Weasley. I remember."

"You're not taking this seriously."

"I am, actually, but I'm not sure what I can do about it. She's a teenage girl and I'm her teacher. I can't very well tell her whom to date or not date."

"Then tell Malfoy. You're his godfather."

"That will have just the opposite effect. You _are_ familiar with _Romeo and Juliet_?"

"I should never have paired them in Defence. I was only trying to nudge him away from being a pureblood supremacist berk. I never thought he'd develop a bloody crush on me. Her," she corrects.

"See, the pronouns do get tricky."

"I don't want to go back."

"I wish you didn't have to," he says. "It'll be torture, watching her grow up, waiting for you to come back to me."

"What if you don't have to wait?"

"Hermione! I have never, in all my years teaching –"

"No, listen. What if we can stabilize the potion and I don't have to go back? What if I stay here until right before I'm supposed to go back, and then make just a short hop forward in time? We could leave Hogwarts, so no one would notice my younger self looking increasingly like me. We could go to Canada or Argentina or Greece or, well, anyplace."

"Even if you only make 'a short hop forward' you'll still end up reintegrating with the you who's in fourth year now, though, as I understand it?"

"Yes," she admits.

"And even if we could sort out all the problems that would cause, the bigger problem is that we don't know the long term effects of the potion, and your diagnostics are troubling."

"Let's work on the potion, see if we can modify it so I can stay here longer."

"We can try," he says, "but I've already been doing some research, and –"

"You have? You 're so sweet."

"I am not _sweet_."

"We can agree to disagree."

"In regards to the matter at hand," he says sternly, then his voice turns gentle again. "I'm not optimistic about the long-term effects. The fact is, you don't belong in this time, and the longer you stay here, the more risk to your health – and your magic."

"I could end up a Squib?"

"Or worse," he says. "If you stayed here because of me, and anything happened to you, I could never forgive myself."

"But we can try?"

"We can try."

* * *

 **Author's Note** : Many thanks again to turtlewexler for beta reading and stellar Brit-picking. She's saved me from a couple of across-the-Atlantic gaffes. I'm nearly finished with the story, have _**only one chapter**_ left to write. It will be 26 chapters long and I plan to continue posting once a day till it's finished. I'm not holding back to torment anyone, but because the chapters turn out much better when I let them sit for a day or two in between rewrites and a final polish. I will miss these characters when the story is finished. Thank you all so much for reading.


	22. Chapter 22

Chapter 22

They spend the winter hols trying, with breaks to explore the first few chapters of Hermione's new favorite book as well as reviewing and expanding upon the Muggle curriculum.

New Years Eve is spent at Malfoy Manor watching Draco court young Hermione, while Lucius and Narcissa look on with apparent equanimity. Hermione's brain hurts from the cognitive dissonance this engenders. Back at the castle, even the promise of starting a new chapter can't stop her brooding about what her younger self looks likely to get up to with Malfoy.

"You could do worse than Draco," Severus says.

"You are _not_ helping," she snaps. "You know, for a brilliant man, you can be _such_ a dunderhead."

"Hermione, are you crying?"

"I am not," she says through her tears.

"Why, pet?"

"Gods, you really _are_ a dunderhead. Because I _love_ you."

"You do?" he says, and looks so nonplussed that it stops her in her tracks. _Oh_. She just _assumed_. _How embarrassing._

"Hermione," he says, but the wheels in her head are turning so fast she barely hears him. _How could I have just blurted that out? The man is always supposed to say it first. It's totally reactionary and sexist but still true. Mum is an ardent feminist and even_ she _says the man is supposed to say it first._

"Hermione, look at me and stop the inner monologue for just thirty seconds, please," he says, cupping her cheek and turning her face so their eyes meet. "I love you, too."

"You do?"

"I do."

"You're not just saying that?"

"I wouldn't say it if I didn't," he says, and then a terrible thought stops him cold. "Were _you_ just saying it?"

"Gods, no."

"All right then," he says, taking her in his arms and wondering if he's ever going to stop second-guessing himself and everything about this… _thing_ …oh, very well, this _relationship_ with her.

"I don't want to go back," she says. "I'm afraid."

 _So am I_ , he thinks, but what he says is, "I'll wait for you."

"You might not still want me."

"Now who's being a dunderhead?"

"Severus, for me it'll be no time at all, but for you it will be seven years. You could meet someone else, decide you don't want me." She's crying again, and he puts his arms around her.

"Hermione, I loved a woman for over twenty years, first when she didn't care for me as more than a friend, then after she refused to forgive me for something you think was trivial, and then for another fourteen years after she was dead," he says. "I think I can manage to remain in love for a measly seven years with a woman who is alive, who forgives me for something truly awful, and who is chomping at the bit to explore every last page of _The Ancient Arte of Sex Magick_ with me."

"Well, maybe not page 387," she says, sniffling. "That one's kind of scary."

"Some Gryffindor you are."

"You're not going to goad me into it that way. I know your tricks."

"Not all of them," he says, trailing kisses down her neck.

"You're trying to distract me."

"Am I succeeding?"

"Keep at it and I'll let you know."

* * *

By the time classes resume, Hermione's headaches are getting worse. She and Severus have made no progress on the Time Turner potion, and they both know what's coming. When Albus tells her that Moody will be ready to take up his position teaching Defence in another week, they know when.

When her last day teaching comes, Hermione is emotionally wrung out. Saying goodbye to her Gryffindor and Slytherin fourth years is almost more than she can take. She's glad they'll all grow up without the death and darkness that awaited them in her timeline, but at the same time, because of that, she won't really know them when she goes back.

After cleaning out her office (she cleaned out what little she had in her quarters the night before) she heads to the dungeons. They agreed that they would have this one last night, and she would use the Time Turner in the morning when it was time for him to go to his first class. She has charmed the dye and straightening potion out of her hair, and vanished the contact lenses for the last time.

"You'll still love me?" she asks for what she hopes isn't the thousandth time.

"I will," he says, toying with one of her curls. "But you may not, once your memories are integrated. I'm prepared for that."

"So you get to be faithful and honorable but you don't trust me to be?"

"I'll be the same person," he says gently. "You'll be two different women, with two different sets of memories, two different life experiences. You can't know how that's going to feel."

"I know that I love you. And in seven years I'll still love you."

"Yes, but in seven years and three months, you might feel differently. You're going to need to wait for your memories to integrate to know for certain how you – the you that's part you and part her – is going to feel."

"If you want to end this, just say it."

"I don't. But I'm not going to hold the Hermione Granger who's fifteen years old to a decision you make for her now. It's her life, too, and she deserves a say in it."

"I don't want to go."

"I know. I don't want you to."

"I'm scared."

"I know, pet."

"Some fucking Gryffindor," she says.

"You're my beautiful, magnificent Gryffindor and I love you."

"And you won't let me marry Malfoy?"

"Or Weasley," he agrees, adding silently, _not if I can help it._ "Now come to bed."

And she does, for the last time. There's no sex magic and very little sex. There is also very little sleep, neither wanting to waste these last few hours. There is a great deal of trying to memorize how the other looks, feels, tastes. Every kiss, every caress says, _yes, I do,_ and _yes, I will_.

In the morning, there are no more tears, no more promises extracted or given, no more _what ifs_. With the remains of their barely touched breakfast cooling on the table, they sit on the sofa, Hermione's head leaning on his shoulder, Severus's hand stroking her side from shoulder to hip.

In her timeline, his portrait told her that she would reappear in the future from the place where she left, not from where she is now. Distracted by the snake and Crouch, she didn't pay close enough attention to know exactly which room it was, but she's told Severus the general vicinity, and he's promised to find it and be there when she arrives.

As terrifying as it is for her, Hermione thinks Severus has it worse, having to wait seven long years. Whatever she finds, at least she'll find it _now_. She looks up at him, and he drops the gentlest of kisses on her lips. She sighs and melts into him, but unlike almost every kiss they've shared, this one stays chaste, and says what they've both run out of words to say.

"I'll see you in seven years, pet," he whispers into her hair.


	23. Chapter 23

**Author's Note** : My beta reader, turtlewexler, tells me that the spell I write as Hominem Revelio is actually Homenum Revelio in canon. Even so, it's bad Latin, and I'm just too swotty to write it that way. I figure if my fictional world is AU enough for Harry and Ron to die in the final battle, and for Time Turners to allow people to travel back years, then it's AU enough to allow for proper Latin forms.

So now it's back to the future...

* * *

Chapter 23

She's in the same set of rooms she left a little over two months before. No elves hanging wallpaper this time, no dark paneling, and no snake. Now the furnishings are bright and there are toys flying through the air as a little blue haired boy laughs in delight. His pink haired mother looks up in surprise. "Hermione!"

"Tonks," Hermione gasps, and throws her arms around the woman she last saw staring unseeing at the ceiling of the Great Hall.

"Not that it isn't lovely to see you, but what are you doing at Hogwarts in the middle of the day?"

"Erm," Hermione says. So she doesn't work here.

"I want Daddy!" Teddy says.

"Daddy's teaching, love. I told you that," Tonks tells him.

And Remus is alive. Teaching DADA, presumably, which is why Hermione isn't.

There's a knock at the door and Tonks opens it. "Severus!" Hermione cries, falling into his arms.

"You act like he's returned from the dead," Tonks says. "You saw him just last Saturday at Fred and Angelina's wedding."

"Fred?" Hermione laughs through her tears. "Severus, we did it! We bloody well _did it_."

"Let's have Poppy check you out," Severus says, then looks at Tonks over Hermione's shoulder. "Work accident," he says. "She'll be fine."

"Is everyone alive?" she asks once the door is closed behind them.

"Every one of them."

"And Riddle stayed dead?"

"Deader than Merlin."

"How did you find me?"

"I knew you were in one of the rooms close to Minerva's office, so I used Hominem Revelio outside each of the doors till I found you."

"Minerva's office? Albus isn't Headmaster still?"

"The Board forced him into retirement a few years ago. Too many dangerous accidents happening to students over the years," he says. "Lucius made it a priority."

"Good." She grins mischievously. "Oh, and Severus? I don't need the hospital wing." Her smile turns predatory. "But I _do_ need to be taken to bed."

"I did some more research on the temporal shift potion after you left. None of the Unspeakables had used it as long as you did, and there were side effects we didn't – Hermione!" He catches her as she sways against him.

"I see what you mean," she says, leaning unsteadily against him as he pushes open the door to the hospital wing.

"Hermione, Severus," Poppy says. "What are you both doing here?"

"Hermione's had a little accident," Severus says. "Can you run a full diagnostic?"

"Of course. But –"

"I'll explain, Poppy. But the diagnostic first."

Hermione watches Poppy frown as she waves her wand over Hermione and different parts of her glow different colors.

"You've suffered significant organ damage," Poppy tells her. "You're going to need several potions we don't have on hand, in addition to the usual healing potions we do have. I'll go get those and ask Neville to brew the others."

"Neville?" Hermione gasps. "You're going to ask _Neville_ to brew potions for me? Poppy, are you trying to kill me?"

"Hermione, you know Neville is an excellent Potions Master. How could he not be, training with Severus?"

"She's had some memory loss as well, Poppy," Severus cuts in before Hermione can say anything else.

"You let _Neville Longbottom_ apprentice with you?" Hermione whispers as Poppy heads for her supply cabinet.

"Turns out he was quite brilliant at potions once he got over being terrified of me. He devised a potion that cured his parents' Cruciatus damage for his mastery project."

"Any other bombshells I should know about?"

"Quite a few, actually. Until things start coming back, say as little as possible, and no more outbursts like that one."

"When am I going to start remembering things?"

"Probably within a day or so, but you won't remember everything for several months. Arthur can fill you in enough to get you through in the meantime."

"Arthur?"

"Arthur Weasley, your boss."

"He's still Minister?"

"No."

"I saved the world and now I work in Misuse of Muggle Artifacts? Really?"

"That's exactly the kind of outburst we don't want."

"Why can't you fill me in?"

"There's something I need to do. I'll be away for a few months, and then –"

"Severus, no! You can't."

"I have to."

"No. I don't know anything about the last seven years and you're the only one who can tell me and –"

"Arthur can."

"Sod Arthur! I want _you_ to tell me! You're the one I'm in love with."

"Not in this timeline," he says, and glances at her left hand. She follows his eyes. There's an enormous square cut diamond set in platinum on her ring finger. And from the way Severus is looking at her, he's not the one who put it there. He stands up. "Arthur's on his way. He'll explain everything."

"No," she says. "Severus, no, please."

The door opens and Draco comes in. "Hermione, are you all right? Tonks said you'd had an accident." He takes her hand and brings it to his lips.

"Severus," Hermione says, but he's walking out the door. "Severus, don't!"

"What's wrong, love?" Draco asks as her tears fall. "What is it?"

"I don't know," she says, and she doesn't, but she's starting to suspect. She's crying harder when Poppy gets back with her potions, and Malfoy – no, Draco if he's the one who gave her that Malfoy-sized rock – is fussing over her.

"Here you are, dear. Drink these," Poppy says, setting a series of small bottles down on the table next to Hermione's bed.

"When can she come home?" Draco asks.

Where's home? Hermione wonders. Does she live with Draco?

"Oh, not for several days at least," Poppy replies.

Draco frowns.

"What's wrong?" Hermione asks.

"Mother's charity ball tomorrow night. You haven't forgotten?"

"Hermione isn't going to any balls for a while yet, young man," Poppy says sternly, then turns to Hermione and indicates one of the potions. "That one will make you sleep, dear."

Hermione nods and drinks it along with the others that _Neville Longbottom the Potions Master_ brewed for her. She hopes she wakes up again. Draco sits with her, holding her hand, until she falls asleep.


	24. Chapter 24

**Author's Note** : Time for another two-chapters-in-one-day posting. All the angst in the reviews is tugging at my heartstrings, and since it's ready, here you go...

* * *

Chapter 24

When she wakes up, Arthur Weasley is sitting where Draco was before. "Hello, Hermione," he says, casting a silent Muffliato.

"Apparently I work for you?"

"In the Department of Mysteries, yes."

"You're an Unspeakable?"

"As are you."

"How much do you know about…all this?"

"About five years ago I asked Severus to do some work for us on a potion to extend the length of time someone could use one of the modified Time Turners. Once he knew I was head of DoM, he told me everything."

"He told you everything?"

"Well, not everything," he smiles kindly. "He said some of it was private, and since he was a better Occlumens than I was a Legilimens, it was going to stay private."

"You're a Legilimens? So the whole dotty fellow who plays with Muggle appliances thing…"

"Keeps our Department flying under everyone's radar, yes. One the boys works with me. It's become quite the family business," he chuckles.

If he tells her Ron Weasley is an Unspeakable, her head will explode. "Bill?" she guesses, and he shakes his head. "Charlie?" Definitely not Percy. The absence of public acknowledgement would kill him.

"Fred."

"Fred?" Hermione gasps. "He and George don't have their joke shop?"

"They do, but Fred was bored by the tedious parts of actually running a business. He still does some consulting for them and brainstorms ideas with George, but Ron handles the management and expansion – they're in America and Canada now, opening in Australia next month. Ron's absolutely brilliant with investments and finance."

Ron the business mogul? She supposes it makes sense. He's a superb chess player, and strategy is strategy.

"He's the only one in the family who's any good with money, thanks in large part to Lucius Malfoy's mentoring."

"Lucius Malfoy is Ron's mentor? I thought you and Lucius Malfoy hated each other?"

"Water under the bridge," Arthur says with a wave of his hand. "When you starting dating Draco, you'd bring him to the Burrow with you, and the boys all became friends. When my boys and Harry found out there was a full-size Quidditch pitch at Malfoy Manor, well, we barely saw them anymore. Lucius would play chess with Ron because he was the only person besides Severus that Lucius couldn't beat in four moves."

"You were Minister of Magic in the timeline I obliterated."

"Severus told me. Dodged a bullet there, didn't I?"

"You don't mind? I was feeling a bit guilty about that."

"Even if I wanted a political career – and I bloody well don't – I'd want Fred and Ron alive more." He puts his hand on her shoulder. "You saved my boys, Hermione."

"Where's Severus?"

"He thought it would be best if you had time to absorb all the changes, deal with the integration of the memories that will be coming back, without the, erm, complications of, erm, all that."

"What if I want the complications? What if I want _all that_?"

"Hermione, things are going to be very confusing for a while. You've essentially lived two different lives for a seven year period."

"Arthur, where do I live?"

"You and Draco have a flat in London."

"I can't go back there. I have to tell Malfoy."

"You can't."

"I can't live with him and pretend to be in love with him."

"Being an Unspeakable means doing things you 'can't' do. It's in the job description, and you signed up for it."

But she doesn't remember signing up for it. Can they hold her to an agreement another version of her made? "He'll hate me if I break our engagement without telling him why."

"Then either you don't break the engagement, or he'll just have to hate you."

"You're not the Arthur Weasley I knew."

"That's also part of being an Unspeakable. No one outside the Department ever really knows you." His voice turns gentler. "In a few months, you may not want to break your engagement."

"That's why Severus left."

"Yes."

"Is he…with anyone?"

"Severus? I have no idea. He's a very private man, as you know."

She does know. And she knows that a few seconds for her were seven years for him, seven years in which to sulk and brood and talk himself out of loving her, seven years in which he might have fallen in love with someone else.

The days before she can leave the hospital wing are filled with visitors – Harry and Ginny, Ron and Lavender (apparently she's actually _friends_ with Lav-Lav), Neville of course since he's here at Hogwarts (teaching ruddy _potions_ ) and – here's the cherry on top of the mindfuck sundae – Neville's girlfriend, who is apparently no longer _that Parkinson bitch_ but _Pansy_ , Hermione's bosom chum. Has she no _standards_ in this timeline?

Her parents can't come because they're Muggles, but she owled them when she woke up from the first round of potions, and she's going to stay with them for a few days once Poppy says she can leave. Malfoy's pouting about that, because apparently in this timeline no one ever tells him no. She seems to have kept her promise to the point that he's not a racist arsehole, but she's beginning to suspect that he's rather a spoiled brat who sulks when he doesn't get his way.

She also owled Severus only about six hundred or so times, but he hasn't answered. If he was trying to be noble and give her time, he'd write back and say so, wouldn't he? If he still cared about her he'd give her some indication. He wouldn't be this cold. Not the man she left just a few days ago, the man who seemed to love her as much as she loved him. He wouldn't do this. He _couldn't_.

Mum and Dad are flummoxed when she falls sobbing into their arms upon arriving home. She explains that her illness has her emotions in a bit of an upset, and she'll be fine, really. For the first few hours she doesn't want to let them out of her sight, following them around the way poor addle-brained Lucius used to follow Narcissa. Lucius whose mind is still brilliant for business in this timeline, and who has taken Ron Weasley of all people under his wing. Will any of this ever start to seem normal?

She's too embarrassed to ask if she can sleep in Mum and Dad's bed with them, so she brings the cat to bed with her instead. Does she have a cat (or more likely a Kneazle) at the flat she shares with Draco?

She does indeed have a Kneazle, she remembers the next day. His name is Peeves, because when he was a tiny kitten he was so mischievous that Draco kept threatening to let the elves make Kneazle stew. And yes, that's _elves_ plural, because obviously two people living in a flat can't make do with a single elf, can they?

Memories started coming back when she was still in the hospital wing, and they're coming fast and furious now – studying for her NEWTs, meeting Neville's parents after they recovered, the emerald necklace Draco gave her in sixth year to formalize their courtship, working on projects at the Department of Mysteries (at least she loves her job), laughing with Fred at the office, shopping for a wedding dress with her friends, Mum, and Narcissa.

Her Muggle mother, shopping with Narcissa Malfoy, whom Mum calls Cissy. And Cissy (apparently Hermione also calls her Cissy) actually _touching_ Mum without a getting a look on her face like she needs to be disinfected.

She remembers her first kiss with Draco, who can kiss just as well in this timeline. He obviously developed his skills with Parkinson (no, _Pansy_ ) before they got together. Without that surge of Dark magic heating her blood in sixth year, it never occurred to her that there was anything beyond Draco's lovely kisses to want. There was no little voice in her head telling her there was something _more_.

She remembers her first time, with Draco rather than Severus. It was a little awkward, as first times between inexperienced young lovers generally are (he apparently didn't get beyond extensive snogging with _Pansy_ ) but they were both eager and curious and things got better quickly. She's apparently very happy – with her career, with her sex life, and with her unlikely friends.

After three nights at her parents' house she supposes she can't put off going home any longer. She stops at the Ministry first to use the Pensieve. She watches every memory she's regained with Severus in it. During Potions class, she sees him look at her once in a while when she isn't looking, and he looks so sad.

There aren't many memories of him yet, but she sees a disturbing pattern in the ones there are. As the years pass, he looks at her that way less and less, until in recent years he seems completely indifferent. Finally, she watches the memory of him finding her in Remus and Tonks's rooms and taking her to the hospital wing, watches her throw herself at him, playfully demanding he take her to bed, and watches him respond with perfect indifference.

And that's when she knows he doesn't love her anymore. He didn't leave so she could reintegrate her memories without interference. He left because he simply doesn't want her, and it's easier this way. No pleading and crying and feminine histrionics. Just a clean break.

* * *

Hermione can't apparate to her flat because she doesn't remember it, so Fred side-alongs her. He kisses her cheek and leaves her at the front door. She gathers her courage. She's going home to her fiancé, not into the arena to face the lions like the martyrs in Roman days. She's one of the lions, she reminds herself. She's a bloody Gryffindor and she can do this.

Peeves is full-grown now, and leaps into her lap the moment she sits down on a sofa that looks like it cost a year's salary. Draco vanishes the cat hair from the cushions and sits down beside her. He pulls her close. "I've missed you," he murmurs.

"Poppy said no, erm, conjugal relations for a few more days," she lies.

He grins. "They're not technically conjugal if we aren't married yet."

"Malfoy…"

"You never call me Malfoy unless you're angry at me, which you clearly aren't." He kisses her neck. "Or unless you're demanding something unspeakably naughty in bed," he says, and his lips move from her neck back to capture her mouth in a kiss she can't quite respond to. He pulls away and frowns. "What's wrong?"

"I don't know," she lies again. "I just…I need a little time, okay?"

He looks confused, and hurt. "Okay," he says, and she leans against his shoulder.

He looks like her Malfoy, smells like her Malfoy, even kisses like her Malfoy, but he _isn't_ her Malfoy. He's not that beautiful, broken boy she clung to in the grim days after the Final Battle. He didn't grow up to be the sad, self-aware young man who knew he shouldn't want the world to burn so he could be redeemed.

And more to the point, he isn't her _Severus_. Except that Severus isn't _her_ Severus anymore. He's the cool, controlled teacher she remembers from the classroom, not the man who burned for her with a passion that matched the heat of her own. That man had seven years to cool his ardor and move on with his life.

How does she move on with hers? Marry Malfoy – Draco – and force herself to forget a life that isn't hers anymore? Or break it off because it isn't fair to marry him if she loves someone else? Arthur says she should wait until all her memories come back, but how can she wait _here_ , going to bed every night with one man when she's in love with another?


	25. Chapter 25

**Author's Note** : Make that four chapters in one day, this one and one more. The story is **finished**! I'd written the end before the almost-end, so all I had to do was fix some typos turtlewexler caught, and make a couple of last-minute final polishes. Here is the penultimate chapter, and Chapter 26, the last, is coming in a few minutes.

* * *

Chapter 25

"Hermione, darling," Narcissa says, kissing her on the cheek.

"Hello, Cissy," Hermione replies. "Lucius."

"My dear," Lucius says, also kissing her cheek. She's obviously not Draco's pet Mudblood in this timeline, when dinner with the soon-to-be-in-laws appears to be a regular occurrence. And Lucius is neither the broken man he was postwar in her timeline, nor the arrogant bigot she remembers from her earliest years at Hogwarts. He's the man she remembers meeting as Professor Greene at the Yule Ball and again at New Years, gracious and charming. She tries to reconcile this man with the Death Eater she knows he was in his youth, wonders what he did and didn't do in the years leading up to Halloween 1981.

Whatever he might have done then, he's put it behind him now, welcoming a Muggleborn into his family and enthusiastically supporting his son in the business Draco launched earlier this year after years of intensive research. Malfoy Genetic Counseling provides wizarding couples with detailed genetic screening that shows the likelihood of the couple producing magical children, and provides in vitro technology (which is less invasive than the Muggle version) for couples who opt to conceive using donor eggs or sperm because of a high probability of producing Squib children.

"Are you quite recovered from your accident?" Cissy asks.

"Mostly," Hermione says. "I still don't feel a hundred percent."

"What happened, exactly?" Lucius asks.

"Something with a Muggle electrical device."

"And it caused memory loss?"

"Short term, yes. I should be fine in a few months."

Cissy smiles. "Just in time for the wedding."

"Yes." Hermione knows she hasn't mustered the proper show of enthusiasm by Draco's irritated expression. Cissy either doesn't notice anything amiss or is too polite to show it. Lucius, however, is studying her like he's an entomologist and she's an insect pinned to a board.

"That was a good piece the _Prophet_ ran on your business this morning, Draco," Lucius says.

"It was," Draco agrees. "I was half expecting a hit piece, but it was pretty complimentary."

"It's strange, isn't it," Lucius muses, "how no one ever heard of that Professor Greene after she left Hogwarts during your fourth year." Hermione's eyes fly to his, and in response to her unasked question, he continues, "It was she, after all, who started Draco on the path that led to his business."

"Of course," Hermione says.

"I wonder whatever became of her," Lucius says.

"I've tried to find her," Draco says. "It's as though she simply vanished. So strange."

"Indeed," Lucius agrees.

The conversation soon turns to the wedding, and Narcissa waxes enthusiastic about things Hermione knows she should be waxing enthusiastic about, too, but somehow she can't quite manage. Narcissa's smiles turn increasingly brittle, and Draco drinks more wine than usual. Or more than Hermione thinks he probably does usually, since she really isn't sure.

Trying to play the loving fiancée is proving more than Hermione is capable of, and all she can think about is whether she'll be able to put Draco off another night without a row. She can't go on sleeping chastely in the same bed with him without matters coming to a head. It isn't fair to him, and the guilt is eating away at her. He loves her, and he wants her, and her rejection is pushing him to the breaking point.

A dozen and more times a day, she tells herself that she was half in love with Malfoy in her original timeline, and if she hadn't gone back to the past, she'd have married him and probably been happy. She berates herself for mooning over a man who doesn't want her, who ignored every one of her owls, making his desires – or lack thereof – perfectly clear. It was barely two and a half months she was with him in the past, and only a few short weeks that they were lovers. Less than three weeks. Not even twenty days. It was nothing. Did she actually expect him to wait seven years for her, when she was engaged to Draco Malfoy, living with him, sharing his bed?

"Hermione!"

"Sorry, what?" she says, startling as Draco's sharp tone finally cuts through her racing thoughts.

"You were a million miles away, love," Narcissa says.

"I suppose I should be used to that by now," Draco mutters.

Lucius turns to Hermione as the elves vanish the dessert plates. "I have some new acquisitions in the library that I think might interest you, my dear."

"I'd love to see them."

Lucius offers his arm and Hermione takes it. Draco seems content to linger over coffee with his mother, so the two of them head to the library alone.

"Why do you want to marry my son?" Lucius asks as soon as the door closes.

"Pardon?"

"Why do you want to marry my son?" he repeats.

"I…"

"People assume Cissy and I had an arranged marriage. We didn't. Our parents were pleased, but I didn't marry Narcissa Black because she was from the right family or had money or even because she was beautiful. I married her because when she looked at me, I felt like the only man in the world. I married her because I couldn't _not_ marry her, because the idea of not having her left me desolate."

Tears glisten unshed in Hermione's eyes, and Lucius continues. "You used to look at Draco that way, the way Cissy looked at me. Tonight, you look at him the way Bella looked at Rodolphus when she was head over knickers for Tom Riddle."

"I haven't –"

"I know," he says. "You're too noble. You'd rather make yourself miserable. I'm just afraid you'll make my son miserable along with you."

"So am I."

"Hermione, if this – whatever this is – is some temporary problem that's going to go away, and everything is fine between you and Draco, tell me that and I'll mind my own business. I want that to be the case. But I don't think it is. Am I wrong?"

She shakes her head.

"Is there anything I can do?"

"No. There's nothing anyone can do."

* * *

After they floo back to their flat, Draco says not a word to her. He brushes his teeth and changes into silk pyjamas in the bathroom instead of in the bedroom as he usually does, gets into bed and turns his back to Hermione's empty side of the bed.

She stands in the doorway, still dressed, looking at the silk stretched across his shoulders and knows this can't go on.

"Draco."

He ignores her.

"Draco, please."

"What?"

"I'm sorry."

"You're sorry."

"Yes."

"What are you sorry for?" He finally turns to face her. "For not wanting me anymore? For not loving me?"

"I do love you."

"But you don't _want_ me. Don't lie to me," he interrupts when she starts to open her mouth. He gets out of bed and stands to face her. "You're a terrible liar and a worse actress. You always have been."

"I know."

"What happened, Hermione?"

She doesn't know how to answer. _I don't know_? But she does know. _I can't tell you_? That's true, but she can't even tell him she can't tell him. _I could tell you but then I'd have to Obliviate you_? What kind of twisted world is it when a hackneyed joke is the closest she can come to an answer?

"I think I deserve an answer," he says.

"You do. I wish I could give it to you."

He shakes his head in disgust.

"I'm going to go stay with my parents for a while."

"Just so we're clear, the wedding's off, then?"

She takes a steadying breath. "Yes."

"Is there someone else?"

"I've never been unfaithful to you."

"That isn't what I asked."

"I'm sorry, Draco."

He walks back to the bed and gets in, facing away from her.

She packs a few things, picks up Peeves, and apparates to her parents' house.


	26. Chapter 26

Chapter 26

When Fred apparates into her parents' living room, Mum shrieks and drops her mug.

"Sorry about that," Fred says with a wandless Reparo.

"What are you doing here?" Hermione asks. She's curled up on the sofa in her pyjamas, eyes red and swollen from crying, Peeves on her lap.

"I'm here to bring you back to the land of the living," he says. "Or at least to the Leaky. Neville finally popped the question and we're having an impromptu engagement party."

"Tell him congratulations for me."

"Tell him yourself. It's six o'clock at night and you're already in your pyjamas. We can't have that."

"Not already. Still," Mum says with a pointed look as she heads into the kitchen.

Hermione hugs Peeves closer and even though he doesn't like it, he allows it, because she needs to and Kneazles know these things.

"Your jilted fiancé won't be there, if that's what you're worried about," Fred says. "Just Harry and Ginny embarrassing us with their PDA and Ron groping Lavender's arse when he thinks no one's looking."

"So Parkinson didn't show Neville the door once Malfoy was back on the market?"

"In our timeline, Pansy is a lovely girl and a dear friend of yours, and has been _so_ over Draco since fifth year." Fred leans forward. "She told Lavender that Neville does things in bed that you absolutely…" He lowers his voice into a conspiratorial whisper. "Would. Not. Believe."

"Ew. _So_ not okay. Could you Obliviate me, please?" Wait, maybe that's the solution. Maybe Fred could Obliviate this entire fucking soap opera and she could start fresh. "Why would Lav-Lav tell you about Parkinson's sex life anyway?"

"Lav-Lav told Won-Won – apparently hoping he'd study up – and Won-Won came to me as the Weasley family sex god in hopes I'd give him some pointers."

"Please tell me I never told anyone anything about my sex life that got back to you."

" _You_ didn't, but old Snapey said you were a very dirty girl."

When tears fill Hermione's eyes, Fred looks puzzled, and then stunned. "Gods, Mione, you and Snape? I didn't know, I swear," he says when she starts crying in earnest. "I was just trying to make you laugh."

"It _is_ laughable. It's totally ridiculous," she sobs, and lets the whole story pour out along with her tears. Well, not the _whole_ story. She'll never hear the end of it if Fred knows about that book, and doesn't want to join Parkinson and Lav-Lav as fodder for Fred's innuendo.

"What am I going to do, Fred?" she asks, not expecting an answer.

What she does is owl Arthur that she needs time off, pick up her Kneazle and her beaded bag and apparate to her parents' cottage in Cornwall where Mum can't fuss at her all the time about snapping out of it and stiff upper lip and getting back on the horse. It's off season there so she has plenty of peace and quiet in which to cry as she walks along the deserted beach. When the weather is nice enough that she might run into other people out being happy, she stays in the cottage and cries on Peeves's fur.

This morning it's gray and overcast, perfect weather for self-pity, so she's giving her long-suffering familiar a break and doing her crying on the beach.

And wouldn't you know it, despite the dreary weather some tosser just has to go for a walk on _her_ stretch of beach. She turns around and heads back toward the cottage, and then stops, because she has this strange tingling sensation, like when someone is staring at you and you can practically feel their eyes in the back of your head. She turns and looks back and for a moment she thinks it's Severus but that's ridiculous because of course it isn't, only it is, and he's walking faster now, and in a moment he's standing in front of her.

"Hermione," he says. She says nothing. She can't speak without making a fool of herself. She doesn't ask why are you here. Doesn't say how dare you. Doesn't throw herself into his arms and cling and sob and never, ever let go.

"You're not marrying Draco."

She gives her head the slightest shake no.

"Why?"

 _You know why, damn you_ , she thinks.

"Hermione, talk to me."

"I wanted to talk to you three months ago, but you refused. You left me alone in a world I don't know. You, the only person here who knows me, _this_ me."

"For you it was a few seconds. For me it was seven years."

Ah, so she was right. He did move on. So why is he here? "How did you find me?" she asks instead.

"I went looking for you at your parents' house. Your father asked was I the arsehole who made his daughter spend a month crying all over the cat. I said most likely I was. At least I hoped I was. After he punched me, he –"

"Wait. My father _punched_ you? He's normally a very non-violent person."

"He did."

"What did you do?"

"Nothing. I figured I had it coming."

"Too right you did."

"I had to know, Hermione. I had to know you'd still want me after all the memories returned. Can't you see that?"

"All I can see is me lying in the hospital wing calling after you, begging you not to leave me – _begging you_ – and you walking out the door."

"For years I looked for a sign, the slightest indication that I was anything more to you than first your teacher and then your boyfriend's godfather, but there was nothing. Not the slightest hint," he says. "You were a beautiful, brilliant young woman engaged to a rich, handsome young man. You _chose_ him. You knew us both, and you chose _him_."

" _She_ chose him. A girl who never knew what it was like to fight in a war and lose everyone she cared about. That girl wasn't me. _I_ chose _you_."

"I wanted to give you time to –"

"You left me, Severus. I was all alone in a world I don't know and you left me. You fucking _left_ me."

 _I keep doing it_ , he thinks. _Every time I get anywhere close to being happy I fuck it up_. "Yes," he says. "I did, because I was afraid you'd choose him, and I couldn't bear to stand there while you looked at me with pity in your eyes and told me you were marrying Draco."

 _Oh, Severus_. The look in his eyes just about breaks her heart.

"Can you forgive me?" he asks.

"That's really why you left?"

"Yes."

"You still love me?"

"Yes."

"I suppose you must if you let a Muggle punch you and just stood there and took it."

"I almost let Fred Weasley do the same, but fortunately he has better impulse control than your father."

"Or maybe knowing more about you than Dad, he's a little afraid of you?"

"Maybe," he agrees. "Does that mean you forgive me?"

She nods, and then she's in his arms and he's kissing her and she's crying but still kissing him through all the tears because she'll never as long as she lives get enough of kissing this man who _knows_ her and loves her anyway. And he's telling her he does, over and over, in between all the kissing.

"It's too bad Lucius and Cissy hate me now," she says, fingers tangling in his hair. "I'll miss the library. And the cakes."

"Lucius and Cissy would have had a snake-faced despot camped out in their drawing room without you," he says, palming a breast. "I think they owe you one."

"Think they'll ever let me use their library?" she asks, then gasps as he feels his hand moving… _oh, yes, there, yes, just like that_.

"Eventually," he murmurs against her throat. "Until then, I'll sneak books out for you."

"Don't leave me again," she sighs in between kisses. "I couldn't bear it."

"Never," he promises. "Do you really forgive me?"

"I do. But honestly, Severus," she says before the snogging and groping gets out of hand. There's nobody here but it _is_ a public beach, after all. "That dunderheaded stunt moves you _way_ past Albus on the greatest gits list."

"I'm number two?"

"Maybe even number one."

"Really, Hermione? I'm worse than Riddle? Worse than the fucking _Dark Lord_?"

"Maybe tied."

"I'm tied with a reptilian megalomaniac? When I haven't made even a single Horcrux? When I haven't cast an Unforgivable since 1981?"

She looks at him with eyes threatening to overflow again. "You took my heart and chopped it up like it was potions ingredients."

His voice is a strangled cry as he pulls her close and murmurs the kind of things he used to sneer at people for even feeling, let alone saying out loud, and the kissing and crying starts all over again. Though the crying is only Hermione, because really, there are limits to how soppy he's going to get.

"You were going to let me marry _Malfoy_ ," she says when she's recovered herself. "I _told_ you not to let me marry Malfoy."

"I did convince the two of you to put off your wedding until this summer. That has to count for something."

"It shouldn't have even got as far as planning. Do you have any idea how much time Cissy has wasted on this ridiculous, ostentatious wedding? And the money! I don't know how far in advance you have to pay deposits for a wizarding wedding, but –"

"So I should have told you to marry an over the hill ex-Death Eater with bad teeth when the most eligible bachelor in wizarding Britain was courting you?"

"Yes."

"When you seemed happy to be courted?"

"Yes."

"When your fiancé was young and handsome and smart and made you laugh?"

"Yes. And the only reason you have bad teeth is that you're perverse. You could fix them if you wanted. You're a wizard, for fuck's sake."

"Come home, and I'll fix them," he says.

"I don't give a rat's arse about your teeth."

"Come home, pet."

"I am home."

"Cornwall is home?"

"No," she says. "Wherever you are is home."

Finis

* * *

 **Author's Note** : Thank you all so much for reading my story. I have appreciated your reviews and encouragement more than I can tell you. I feel a little sad seeing it end.

Reviews throughout the story suggest that many of you feel just as awful as I do that I wasn't able to give Draco a HEA. He's been breaking my heart since Chapter 2. Turtlewexler and I tossed around ideas in PM toward the end of the story looking for a way to do it, but the integrity of the story seemed to call for saving the world to come at a price. For me, the saddest thing at all wasn't that Draco didn't get the girl, but that he didn't get to become the man he was in the original timeline. Someday I may have to write a Dramione to make it up to him.

I'm marking the story complete, but there are ideas for an **epilogue** (or two?) floating around in my head. For now, I'm leaving it as is, but reserve the right to revisit that decision at some point.


	27. Chapter 27

Epilogue

For a while, Cornwall is home. After initially saying he doesn't want that arsehole staying in his holiday home, John Granger grudgingly acquiesces to Hermione's insistence that the whole thing was a misunderstanding and Severus is not actually a bigger villain than the Dark Lord. Hermione makes a convincing case that holidays are going to be bloody awkward if her father doesn't come round eventually, and come round he eventually does, not because of the merit of her case, but because he can never deny his darling girl anything for long. And so Hermione and Severus stay in Cornwall until the planned date of the wedding they ruined has come and gone.

Severus has a brewing station set up in the garden shed and can make a living here as well as anyplace else. Hermione walks on the beach without crying, tries to make it up to Peeves for all the waterworks the poor beast endured earlier, and annotates her now well-worn favorite book. The only notation on page 387 is a spiky _Some fucking Gryffindor you are_ and _Nice try, Number Three_ in a more rounded script below it.

They have about two more weeks to figure out what's next, because that's when Helen Granger says she wants her damn holiday home back, than you very much.

Hermione supposes she'll go back to the Department of Mysteries. She did like the work, but not as much as she liked teaching DADA at Hogwarts. With Remus barely into his forties, he'll probably be there for decades, so it's either the DoM or look into teaching in America or Australia. She doesn't think her French is quite up Beauxbatons. Then again, would anyone even think she was qualified to teach Defence? She can't exactly put her experience at Hogwarts on her CV when it happened in another timeline.

A knock interrupts her dithering over whether to owl Arthur today or continue hiding from Rita Skeeter's scurrilous stories about her leaving the wizarding world's most eligible bachelor at the altar. She opens the door to see Lucius Malfoy standing on the front porch. She draws in a surprised breath.

"May I come in?" he asks.

"Of course," she says, and steps back to let him enter. "Would you like tea?"

"That would be lovely, thank you, my dear."

She's still _my dear_? That's even more unexpected than him showing up at her parents' beach house in the first place. "Won't you sit down?" she says, and he does. She goes into the kitchen, starts the water boiling, then heads out to the makeshift lab. Severus is just extinguishing the flame under his cauldron. "Lucius Malfoy is here."

"He is?"

"He's in the sitting room. I'm making tea."

Severus starts back toward the kitchen door, looking rather the way Ron used to when he had to tell Molly about something the three of them had got up to. He waits with her in the kitchen while she makes the tea and puts chocolate biscuits on a plate, then holds the door open for her when she picks up the tray.

"Hello, Severus," Lucius says, pleasant as you please.

"Lucius."

"How did you find us?" Hermione asks.

"Your mother told me," he says and bites into a biscuit.

 _Of course she did_. Mum loves all three Malfoys but especially Lucius, who takes mischievous pleasure in making the mature, professional, feminist Helen Granger blush like a schoolgirl with his flirting. After what Lucius told her the evening she broke her engagement, Hermione suspects that the whole ladies' man persona is just his _schtick_ and Lucius has quite likely been faithful to Cissy all these years. Since any unavoidable debauchery at Death Eater revels pre-1981, anyway. Severus won't say much about that, just smirks, and Hermione isn't sure whether he's just taking the piss and there actually wasn't as much depravity as people assume.

"The biscuits are very nice," Lucius says.

"Thank you," Hermione replies. "Erm, how are Cissy and Draco?" She gives Severus an irritated glance, hoping he isn't going to make her do all the heavy lifting in this exceedingly awkward little tea party.

"They're fine, my dear. Draco is dating a lovely young lady. A Miss Greengrass. You may have known her at Hogwarts."

"Daphne?"

"Her younger sister, Astoria. And speaking of Hogwarts, that's the official reason for my visit." When Hermione and Severus exchange a puzzled glance, he continues, "Apparently there's a would-be Dark Lord on the rise in America, and the Yanks are aggressively recruiting Aurors. Both Lupins, Remus and Nymphadora, have signed on, and Minerva needs a new Defence professor."

"I have no desire to teach again," Severus says.

"The offer wasn't meant for you, actually," Lucius says, and gives Hermione the smile that turns her mother to jelly. "It's for Professor Greene."

Hermione gapes. "You knew, that night at dinner," she says. "That's why you brought her up."

"I did. I noticed a resemblance between the two of you at our New Years ball that year, and over the years, as you grew older, I became certain. I didn't know when your older self would return from the past, just that you'd be somewhere in your early twenties, judging by appearances. When you had your accident and Draco told me how you were behaving, I thought it might have happened, and when you came to dinner I was certain."

"Because of the way I looked at Draco. Or rather, didn't look at him."

"And the way Professor Greene looked at Severus at that New Years ball."

"That's why you weren't angry with me."

"How could I be? The whole thing is rather beautifully tragic."

"Not so beautiful when you're at the apex of the love triangle," Hermione says. "I really do feel terrible about what I did to Draco."

"He'll get over it," Lucius says. "In truth, it might even be good for him. You're the first thing he's ever wanted and not been able to have. A little adversity builds character."

Hermione doesn't tell Lucius he should have thought of that a couple of decades ago. "It's a pity you'll have to be Obliviated and won't remember I'm qualified to teach DADA."

"Obliviated? My dear, what are you on about?"

"I'm an Unspeakable. That's why I couldn't tell Draco about any of this, why I had to let him hate me and think I was just fickle and awful."

"But _you_ didn't tell him – or me – anything."

"That's a technicality. It may satisfy the letter of the law, but not the spirit."

Lucius laughs and looks at Severus. "Is she always like this?"

"Always," Severus confirms. "You haven't spent as much time around members of her House as I have. They're pretty much all like this."

"I've told Draco and Cissy everything," Lucius says, "and neither of them is upset with you in the least. Well, Cissy isn't. Draco is coming round, with a little help from Miss Greengrass."

"You can't just –"

"I already have, my dear. There's nothing you can do about it. You can't Obliviate my entire family, you know. And you don't really want to, do you?"

"No, but my boss at DoM will, when I tell him."

"Why on earth would you tell him?"

"Because I have to. I'm an Unspeakable."

"Not if you owl your letter of resignation and accept my offer to teach at Hogwarts."

"Oh," she says. It's a technicality, and entirely too sneaky for her liking. She suspects she's at the top of a slippery slope to Slytherin-style sneakiness, but is desperately tempted all the same. Possibly having Malfoy as a friend again, _and_ the library, _and_ the cakes…it's all too tempting, really.

* * *

Hermione loves the Gryffindor and Slytherin fourth years. Not only because both of her godsons are in this particular fourth year class, but because she's discovered a particular affinity for dealing with teenagers at this awkward, difficult stage.

"Pair up and practice simultaneous attacking and shielding. Mr. Potter, Mr. Malfoy, what have I told you? You won't improve your technique if you always duel with the same partner."

"Yes, Professor," James and Scorpius say, and go in search of other partners. It took her godsons a good part of their first year to get used to calling her Professor Snape instead of Aunt Hermione in class. Her son, who is a firstie now, made the transition far more easily, and hasn't slipped and called her Mum once. Swotty little Ravenclaw that he is, her Lucius has to be perfect in everything.

Hermione walks among the dueling pairs, offering praise or correcting form where necessary. She stifles a laugh and pretends not to hear James's muffled obscenity as Fred's daughter kicks his arse in their duel.

When the students are panting and sweaty, she stops them and has them write two feet on what went right and wrong in their duels and what they'd do differently next time. At the end of class she offers them the treat they like best – taking turns attacking her four against one. She's panting and sweaty herself when she dismisses class and heads to her quarters.

Severus and their daughter are just getting back from their shopping expedition, Becky's reward for learning to read _all by herself_.

"Mummy!" Becky cries, hurling herself into Hermione's arms. "Look what Daddy bought me." She holds up a stuffed Eeyore.

 _Eeyore_? Hermnione looks at Severus, who busies himself pulling shrunken books out of his pockets. "I thought you were shopping for books," she says.

"We did that, too. Daddy bought me _all_ the Pooh books." Becky points to the stack of books Severus has just returned to full size. "All of them! With the most beautifulest pictures!"

"Most beautiful," Hermione corrects.

"They really are," Becky says. "But the bookstore had _toys_ , too."

"A wizarding bookstore would not sell _plushies_ ," Severus sneers.

"A wizarding bookstore also wouldn't sell the collected stories of A. A. Milne," Hermione points out as Becky climbs onto her lap. She kisses her daughter's cheek and asks, "Why did you choose Eeyore, love?"

"I endeavored to persuade her to Pooh or Piglet or even the odious Tigger," Severus says.

"I had to have Eeyore," Becky tells her mother, "because he's sad and he needs me to love him so he won't be sad anymore."

"She's going to be sorted into Hufflepuff, you know," Severus mutters.

"No, he won't be sad anymore," Hermione tells Becky. She rests her chin on the girl's jet curls and looks at Severus. "He won't be sad because he knows you love him."

* * *

 **Author's Note** : Thank you again for reading, and for reviewing if you did. Another thank you to turtlewexler, who told me that in Britain people say _holiday home_ instead of _beach house_ (who knew?) and who helped me work out the kinks in the story's ending.


	28. Author's Note: The Sequel

**Author's Note:**

After months of working diligently on my original fiction and resisting the siren song of fan fiction, I can resist no longer, and have just posted the first chapter of a sequel to _Past Imperfect_ , called, perhaps predictably, _Present Imperfect_. In her first year at Hogwarts, Becky Snape thinks to have a bit of fun with her mum's Time Turner and inadvertently creates a dystopian alternate timeline.

Apparently the premise is similar to _Cursed_ _Child_ , which I have not read, and don't plan to until after I've finished the story, so as not to be influenced. The canon characters in _Present Imperfect_ belong only to J.K. Rowling, but the plot is entirely original, as are the next generation characters, Becky Snape and Gus Longbottom.

Reviewers of _Past Imperfect_ seem to have been particularly affected by Original Timeline Draco, as was I while writing him. This Draco will be back to wreak havoc with our heartstrings all over again in the sequel.

 **Update:**

I wrote first one sequel, _Present Imperfect_ , and then another, _Future Imperfect_. The trilogy is now complete. **_Present Imperfect_ **is a little dark and angsty, but **_Future Imperfect_** is basically a romantic comedy. I think I managed to make amends to poor Draco in the third installment, so I feel a little less guilty about the things I put him through before.

Neither of the sequels have anywhere near the reviews or favorite ratings of the first story, which my beta readers **turtlewexler** and **Fragilereality** tell me is because readers don't generally like stories about the next generation as well as they do the original canon characters. Even if they're not as popular, I thoroughly enjoyed writing both sequels, and will miss Becky Snape as much as I will Severus, Hermione, Draco, and Lucius.


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